The Love Fragments

Author: Eleni Cay
Sequel to: The Love Virus (review)
Series: 7 Kinds of Love
Genre: Romance/ self- discovery
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After the events in the previous book, The Love Virus, Katie Kuznetsov finally gains a phD in Psychology. The story starts with her celebrating her birthday with friends, 2 pages in and troubles are already brewing. The title says much about the theme: fragments. Katie witnesses her family fractures, her friend turning into someone she can barely recognise, and her own relationship splinters. Working in a University researching multiple personality disorders, she wonders her colleague’s words are true.

At the insistence of her best friend Jackie, Katie plunges into the world of social media and finds herself in too deep. Soon, she finds the excitement in someone who notices her.

My Thoughts

I cannot say much about the story without giving it away, because the focus is on relationships. Katie and Mark’s relationship changes from friends to lovers in Love Virus, and then changes again in The Love Fragments. Truth is, many of us can relate with their relationship, which is why I read it in one sitting. The author targets one of the common problems in a relationship and describes it to a ‘T’.

Not to mention giving the people around Katie other issues. The scariest one is surrounding social media and how it influences people’s perception of love and relationship. This part, though, I find a little scary because it is spot on. I get goosebumps reading it, it mirrors my life when I tried to be part of the “in” crowd. In the end, I decided that relationship with my kids has to be real and not through social media and screens. It is still hard doing it, because Facebook and other platforms are designed to be addictive.

So how true is it?

The characters are purely fictional, but the situations are not… all made up. Scroll through the news and you see that lives and relationships destroyed because of some post on the Internet. People are not getting their dream jobs because of that drunk photo up on Facebook. Nowadays, people have trouble connecting in the real world, because you can hide behind a screen in the digital one. Katie’s fictional story is a prompt reminder that all relationships that are worth keeping and pursuing are the ones that need the most work.

Verdict

I think that there will be another book. After all, the author leaves an open ending in Love Fragments and I’m dying to know if Katie gets the happy ending that she deserves. While Love Fragment can be “partly” read as a standalone, the flow is a lot better if you read the Love Virus beforehand.