Cursed Connections, Jaylee Austin

I thought downloading a cursed dating app would give me something to talk about at parties. I didn’t expect it to knock the lights out of my life. I’m Shelly: burned out, bitten by bad dates, and—this week—inexplicably matched with a cosmic troublemaker who thinks compatibility tests are the cure for loneliness. Zynar’s funny, infuriating, and sometimes infuriatingly honest. He’s also very definitely not supposed to exist outside of the app.

When the company that runs LitaRealm decides to purge its servers, Zynar’s not the only thing on the line—every memory, every risk we’ve taken together, and every stubborn scrap of hope I’ve allowed to grow will be deleted. So we do what desperate people do: we cheat, we conspire, and we put everything at stake for the possibility of something real. I narrate this with scars and sarcasm and an improbable amount of courage I didn’t know I had. By the end, the question isn’t only whether I can save him—but whether I can save myself from what I’ve always been afraid to want.