49 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenThe True Love Experiment
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Christina Lauren
Christina Lauren is the pen name adopted by the American writing team of Christian Hobbs and Lauren Billings. Together, they have written over 30 books of contemporary adult romance, new adult romance, and young adult fiction.
Their first novel together was Beautiful Bastard (2013), a reworking of a story that began as Twilight fan fiction and enjoyed enormous popularity. The success of Fifty Shades of Grey with its office romance, billionaire boss, and erotic encounters led Simon & Schuster to acquire the duo’s Beautiful series with its similar tropes. The nine books in the series, published between 2013 and 2016, all reached the New York Times bestseller list. The Wild Seasons series, which debuted in 2014, enjoyed similar success as readers were drawn to the new adult romances of a group of graduating college students entering the real world. Their standalone novels have received varying levels of acclaim, with many becoming bestsellers or optioned for film adaptations. Autoboyography (2017) won praise for its sensitive story about two teen boys falling in love and coming out to their communities.
The authors frequently work pop culture references into their fiction, particularly into their romances, which they define as light-hearted and fun. This is clear in The True Love Experiment, which plays with both romance novel and reality TV conventions. While the duo has experimented with a wide variety of tropes, their signature is witty banter, grounded and realistic heroines, and strong communities for their protagonists.
Many of their novels have won awards and recognition, from Kirkus starred reviews to spots on Publisher’s Weekly and Entertainment Weekly’s best-of lists. The authors regularly appear at writing conventions, book fairs, and comic cons as advocates for the romance genre. They have been inducted into the Library Reads Hall of Fame and are frequently nominated for Goodreads Choice awards, in addition to other honors.
Cultural Context: Reality Dating Shows
The first reality dating show in the US aired on TV in 1965. The Dating Game was a matchmaking show that hid contestants from their possible matches, and the selector chose a date based on their answers to questions. Versions of the show ran until 1999. Blind Date began in the UK in 1985 and incorporated the gimmick of sending contestants on dates to judge their compatibility. The Bachelor, the longest-running and largest reality dating franchise, first aired in 2002. This show required contestants to compete for a man and introduced weekly elimination rounds. It inspired many spinoffs, including The Bachelorette, which features eliminated female contestants from The Bachelor getting their own chance to pick from a pool of prospects.
The success of The Bachelor spurred a multitude of variations, many of which rely on a gimmick or angle to be unique. Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, for example, follows a hired matchmaker who helps millionaire candidates find love, while Temptation Island uses a setting of forced proximity to see if bonded couples will remain faithful. Similar to the conceit in The True Love Experiment, MTV’s Are You the One? finds couples who are scientifically matched via an algorithm, putting them in a controlled environment, and staging activities. Shows like Love Island not only combine competition and dating show elements but also invite audience participation by having viewers vote for the couples they like. Many shows are staged as real interactions but are closely scripted with plenty of melodrama and titillation to keep audiences engaged. This combination proves consistently successful for ratings, even if the shows’ track records of successful and enduring relationships are quite low. The True Love Experiment shows this scripted aspect of reality television while providing the real happy ending that is often lacking in dating shows.
Related Titles
By Christina Lauren
