Book Review: You Pierce My Soul by Jessica May Best

Official Synopsis: In the utopian city of New Ionia, everyone gets a soulmate – and Zada can’t wait for hers. Now that she’s eighteen, it’s her turn to meet her destiny with the help of Heartsong, an algorithm that chooses your perfect match for you.

Then Zada crashes into her soulmate, setting off their shared Heartsong, and the unthinkable happens: she feels nothing for him. But the Heartsong program doesn’t make mistakes, and by the end of the night, Zada is engaged to a man she doesn’t love.

Desperate for a way out, Zada turns to her beautiful, reckless, and utterly impossible former best friend Daphne. Together, the two embark on a quest for the truth that throws Heartsong – and their entire world – into question. As time runs out, Zada must find the courage to choose what she believes and who she loves.

Zada Chambers thinks she knows what she wants, or at least she knows what the world around her expects of her. She didn't mean to learn who her soulmate was so soon, especially when she can't stop thinking about her former best friend. Now, she is engaged to a man she feels nothing for and she can't help but wonder if the Heartsong can be wrong...

When she reconnects with Daphne, her former best friend and a person known for getting into trouble, they start to investigate the Heartsong, and if the program is even working at all. As they dig more and more into the Heartsong, and New Ionia as a whole, they start to see that they have been lied to for much of their life, starting with what New Ionia even is. As they learn more about the world outside their domed utopia and the people who run it, Zada starts to wonder if her Heartsong is wrong, and if she is meant to be with the person who she has been trying to avoid.

A mix of The Selection with the dystopian vibes of the capital in The Hunger Games, this book is a wild ride from start to finish. I was immediately drawn in by Zada, and her general understanding of what was expected vs the parts of her that seemed to think it was all wrong. As she watches one of her best friends get married to someone that she isn't sure she even loves, all because a program told them they would be perfect together.

One of my favorite parts about this book is the Heartsong program, and what it is trying to do for New Ionia while also being flawed. The program itself uses data it gets throughout your life and sorts through who would make the most sense for you, and the city, to be with after you are eighteen. When you turn eighteen, you then have the ability to 'run' into your soulmate and hear a specific tune play when it happens. This leads to almost an immediate proposal and an even faster wedding. The city itself seems made to be ready for the next big wedding, hoping for the next match via Heartsong and pushing the program to everyone. But what if you don't feel anything for your match? Well, surely you will over time, but to get to the wedding they will offer counseling, which seems to be some type of memory wipe medication that gets you through the wedding day full of blissful feelings, just enough to make the match happen. There also is a part of the wedding that involves linking you to you spouse, and if you are to separate or cheat, the consequences involve getting removed from the city forever.

As Zada starts to question if the Heartsong can be right, Daphne helps her start to see that a program can't account for real human emotion. Especially when it also accounts for what the city needs too, such has having straight couples over queer ones. Zada and Daphne start to work closer and closer together to find a way to get Zada out of this match, but they start to learn even more about the lies the city has been telling them.

I think having the Zada be someone who believes in the system, then gets to see it gets dismantled, is a fun POV to have, since we know Daphne already really hated the whole thing. I also enjoyed seeing how many people in the city knew the truth and were ready and willing to help anyone who needed to be free of it. We get to see how this city was built in the United States, but then tells its citizens the rest of it is gone or wasteland. So when they kick people out of the city, they are sent into the nothingness...right?

This book is full of twists and turns and I feel like every chapter had me learning something new about New Ionia with Zada. The ending is especially fast paced and you really need to buckle in for the last few chapters. The book itself is well written with a unique plot that really make it stand out as a young adult dystopian. I also really liked the sapphic romance plot line and the others we get to see in the background.

I rated this book 4 / 5 stars!

You Pierce My Soul comes out May 5, 2026!

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