Introduction

In the spirit of ONE DAY, comes a fresh and warmhearted love story for the 21st century. Sometimes the end is just the beginning . . .

Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can't get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. Sam meets the love of his life, a coworker named Meredith, but he also gets fired when the company starts losing all their customers to Mr. and Ms. Right.

When Meredith's grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam uses his ample free time to create a computer program that will allow Meredith to have one last conversation with her grandmother. Mining from all her correspondence?email, Facebook, Skype, texts?Sam constructs a computer simulation of Livvie who can respond to email or video chat just as if she were still alive. It's not supernatural, it's computer science.

Meredith loves it, and the couple begins to wonder if this is something that could help more people through their grief. And thus, the company RePose is born. The business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say good-bye, there is someone who can't let go.

In the meantime, Sam and Meredith's affection for one another deepens into the kind of love that once tasted, you can't live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to? This entertaining novel, delivers a charming and bittersweet romance as well as a lump in the throat exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life (both real and computer simulated). Maybe nothing was meant to last forever, but then again, sometimes love takes on a life of its own.

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Excerpt

Killer App
Sam Elling was filling out his online dating profile and trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand, he had just described himself as "quick to laugh" and had answered the question, "How macho do you consider yourself?" eight on a scale of ten. But on the other hand, the whole thing was really quite frustrating, and no one, he knew, ever admitted to anything less than an eight on the masculinity scale anyway. Sam was trying to come up with five things he couldn't live without. He knew that many would-be daters cheekily wrote: air, food, water, shelter, plus something else vaguely amusing. (He was thinking Swiss cheese would be a clever addition to that list, or possibly vitamin D, though since he was in Seattle, he seemed, in fact, to be living quite nicely without it.) He could go the techie route—laptop, other laptop, tablet, wifi connection, iPhone—but they'd think he was a computer geek. Never mind that he was; he didn't want them to know that right away. He could go the sentimental route—framed photo from parents' wedding, grandfather's lucky penny, program from his star turn in his middle school production of Grease, acceptance letter to MIT, first mix tape ever made for him by a girl—but he suspected that would belie his reported macho factor. He could go the lactose route: Swiss cheese again (he was clearly craving Swiss cheese for no apparent reason) plus chocolate ice cream, cream cheese, Pagliacci's pizza, and double tall lattes. It wasn't really true though. He could live without those; he just wouldn't like it very much. The point was this exercise was five things: annoying, prying, cloying, embarrassing, and totally pointless. He didn't have any hobbies because he worked all the time which was the reason he couldn't find a date. If he didn't work all the time (or weren't a software engineer and so also worked with some women), he would have time for hobbies he could list, but then he wouldn't need to because he wouldn't need online dating in order to meet people. Yes, he was a computer geek, but he was also, he thought, smart and funny and reasonably good-looking. He just didn't have five hobbies or five witty things he couldn't live without or five interesting things on his bedside table (truthful answer would have been: half-full water glass, quarter-full water glass, empty water glass, crumpled used Kleenex, crumpled used Kleenex) or five revealing hopes for the future (never to have to do this again, repeat times five). Nor did he care about anyone else's reported hobbies or five requirements for life, bedside tables, or futures. He had already answered variations of these inane questions with another service, dated their dates, and saw what all of this nonsense came to. It came to nonsense. If you picked the ones who seemed pretty down-to-earth (books, writing implement, reading lamp, clock radio, cell phone), you got boring. If you picked the ones who seemed eccentric (yellow rain hat, Polaroid camera, lime seltzer, photo of Gertrude Stein, plastic model of Chairman Mao), you got really weird and full of themselves. If you picked the one who seemed like a good fit ("Laptop and honestly nothing else because that has all I need"), you got a computer geek so much like your college roommate that you wondered if he'd had an unconvincing sex change operation without telling you. So you had your pick of boring, weird, or Trevor Anderson. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

RePose takes heat from the press and from religious groups. What do you think those groups' reactions would be if this technology existed? Are their concerns legitimate?

Why does Meredith start to become disillusioned with the virtual Livvie? For which of their clients does RePose seem to work best? And for whom does it work less well? What seems to make the difference?

Who's your favorite RePoser?

Who grows and changes the most over the course of the novel?

Do Dash and Meredith seem like family? They're very different, but what do they have in common?

There's a lot of loss in this book, but there's a lot gained as well, especially in the way of new and sometimes surprising family. What's gained here?

What new love does RePose bring about?

Does the technology in this book seem possible? How much of your identity is online?

If RePose existed, how well do you think you could be recreated based on your online archive?

How is the picture of you presented on Facebook or Twitter or other social media sites an accurate one, and how is it less accurate?

How much time do you spend online, or, maybe more to the point, what percentage of your social time is spent socializing online?

How do social networking sites make socializing easier and more fun? And how do they make it harder and less fun?

If RePose existed, would you use it? Who would you contact? Would you video chat or just email? What would you say if you could?

What should happen to our online identities -- our Facebook pages and old emails and video chats and Twitter feeds and archived texts and blogs, etc. -- after we die?

How can social media help the loved ones we leave behind?

SPOILER ALERT! The questions below give away major plot points of the book. DO NOT READ THEM UNTIL YOU'VE FINISHED THE BOOK! (We're really not kidding. Stop scrolling down if you haven't read the book yet...) (Last chance...)
Whose method of mourning seems more effective: Sam's or his dad's?

Why does Sam tell Julia she can't RePose? Is he right or wrong to deny her the chance to speak with her daughter again?

Meredith is really our own Dead Loved One, the only projection we know both before and after death, so she's our chance to see whether RePose really works. Does it? Is Meredith's projection a good likeness of her? A satisfying one? When she says things she's said before, do you feel more joy at remembering or despair at her loss?

Penny and Josh both argue that RePose is for the dying. Who benefits most from RePose -- the dying, the living, or the dead? How does it help each of those groups?

Sam feels that he's been forgiven at the very end of the novel. What sins does he think he's committed, and do you agree? Should he be sorry? How can he make amends? Why does Meredith get the last word? What hope does she offer?

Weblinks

»	Check out the Publisher's book info
»	Author Laurie Frankel's web site
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