Eve, one of the main characters of my novel LOVE IS AN ALGORITHM, is a musician. Which meant I spent a lot of time reading Pitchfork, listening to Popcast, and, of course, making playlists.
Pravda, Vampire Weekend
I know what lies beneath Manhattan
I know what’s buried in Grant’s Tomb
Eve grows up in Manhattan and writes about it often; when Danny, the other main character of the book, listens to Eve’s music, he longs for her insidery perspective on New York. I love “Pravda” because it gives me that sense of New York insiderness. What does lie beneath Manhattan? Can someone show me?
The Kill, Maggie Rogers
I was all the way in, you were halfway out the door
I was an animal making my way up the hill
And you were going in for the kill
This is a book about music, but it’s also a book about dating. Primarily, it’s a book about wanting to crawl into your partner’s head to know if they love you as much as you love them; if you are safe putting your heart on the line. I love that this song is about heartbreak while remaining undeniably bright and assured.
I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All, Father John Misty
Parachute into the Anthropocene,
An amnesiac, a himbo Ken doll
I guess time does make fools of us all
At one point in this book, Eve has a breakdown about AI (relatable!). She wants to write a song that literally no one is asking for. She writes something exceedingly long, stately and sweeping, epic and grand, revealing and literary. To me, that is exactly what the entire Mahashmashana album is. Why are all the songs nine minutes long? Why is it so sexy, so eccentric, so bleak? When I’m listening, am I hopeful or am I depressed? To me (and to Eve), music like this is the antidote to AI art. It’s so unexpected that you can’t imagine an algorithm was involved - which makes you feel like it deserves the fullness of your fractured attention.
Doll House, Del Water Gap
As if you needed a reason to call me,
A reason to call me at all.
I imagine this song - or something very like this song - near the end of Eve’s album ski rat, which is about the demise of a four-year-long relationship. I don’t know whether this song is about romantic love or the love between friends, but it always hits my ear as a friendship song - how a really, really great friend can feel like the love of your life, and how they are your port of call when you step into the unknown.
Are You Looking Up, Mk.gee
Are you looking up? Are you asking why?
‘Cause if you wanna go, then baby go wide.
I think this song is about standing on the precipice of success. I say “I think” because, frankly, I find all the songs on this album delightfully thorny - like something half-heard from another room in the apartment. Mk.gee’s music doesn’t feel particularly diaristic, which leaves the listener the rewarding task of revisiting the songs over and over again to figure out where her emotional responses are coming from. In my own writing career, I’ve roamed gradually from the extremely removed from my own life (YA fantasy novels) to the near-to-life (novels about 20-somethings in New York). The question of how transparent to make these books - how much to let the reader see me, the author, on the other side of the pages - is the question that inspired this book. It’s also the question that Eve turns over as she writes music.
You can listen to the Spotify playlist for Eve’s first album, PRELAPSARIAN, and her second album, ski rat.
Narrator: Karissa Vacker
A Novel
Pattern is more than just a dating app—it’s your friendly relationship coach. It will tell you whether you should invest in learning your partner’s love language (quality time!) or pull the escape hatch (red flags galore!). The latest version of Pattern includes Bug, a friendly AI chatbot guaranteed to give you bespoke relationship advice and help revitalize that spark. Take the uncertainty out of love!
Eve wants to make music that's fueled by love, passion, and rage (feelings!). She trusts her gut and her friends and in no way wants to rely on technology, let alone AI, to tell her how she feels. Danny is anxious—about his dad, his dating life, his coffee order (why is it twelve dollars?), and about the dating app he helped create, which seems determined to serve him terrible matches.
When Eve and Danny start dating, it feels like the solution to all of Danny’s worries—except when it doesn’t. Is she happy? Should he be doing more? Or less? This becomes the catalyst for a revolutionary new version of Danny’s app that promises to quantify relationship health and potential, helping users understand what's really going on. Problem solved!
As Pattern and Bug, the ever-so-friendly AI assistant, catch fire, users everywhere begin outsourcing major life decisions to Danny’s algorithms. But as Danny reckons with his newfound success, Eve—whose career relies on her ability to write her emotions into song—grows increasingly skeptical of the app’s impact on genuine connection. Their relationship becomes the ultimate modern experiment: How do you fall and stay in love in the digital age?
Science Fiction Romance | Novella / Short Story | Mystery [ Park Row, On Sale: March 31, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780778305774 / eISBN: 9780369774774 ]
Laura Brooke Robson writes books about snarky girls and climate peril. She’s from Bend, Oregon, which means she’s contractually obligated to talk about the fact she’s from Bend, Oregon. As a college student, she did English shenanigans at Stanford, which some were known to describe as “a feat of daring” and “probably not going to make you as much money as CS.”
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