Long Lost Reviews is a monthly meme created by Ally over at Ally’s Appraisals which is posted on the second Thursday of every month. The aim is to start tackling your review backlog. Whether it’s an in-depth analysis of how it affected your life, one sentence stating that you only remember the ending, or that you have no recollection of reading the book at all.
Published: 23 February 2017 (print)/20 July 2017 (audio) 
Publisher: E Dooland/Tantor Audio
Pages: 358/12 hours, 32 min
Narrator: Cat Gould
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Fiction Romance
★ ★ – 2.5 Stars
Maths wiz Gemma Rowe has found the one problem her maths can’t solve: she’s fallen for her female & very heterosexual best friend.
Gemma Rowe is a shy maths nerd from Sydney who, despite having an affinity for probability and logic, only just worked out at 28 that she’s not actually straight. Not only is she not straight, but she’s developed feelings for her best friend Sarah.
Sarah and Gemma go way back—since they met at university, they’ve been completely inseparable. They’ve travelled together, got jobs at the same company, and shared each other’s triumphs and sorrows. There was even that one memorable time when Sarah, completely drunk, told Gemma she couldn’t live without her. A relationship seems like the perfect solution.
There’s just one teensy little problem with this whole equation: Sarah is straight.
Gemma knows the logical thing to do is to get over Sarah. She wants to be in her own happy relationship and not caught up on her straight best friend. But how is she supposed to get over Sarah when, despite all those advanced problem-solving skills, she can’t even work out who she’s attracted to anymore?
This has been sitting in my unfinished drafts for a couple years and I keep thinking I should write a review before I open it and realise I have three lines of notes and no other recollection about the book. Which makes it perfect for a Long Lost Review.
I haven’t read a lot of adult LGBTQIA books and I found this one by chance and didn’t realise it was adult fiction. It contains a character who is trans and non-binary which I definitely have never read in an adult fiction so I loved that. I feel the adult queer books are not as promoted as well as the young adult, which is strange. Either that are there isn’t a push to highlight them, people will find them by chance if they do. Maybe I am just looking at the wrong lists (highly probable).
There were a few poor pronoun choices when talking about Min, the trans non-binary character, which always caught my attention, either character choice by Gemma or author choice to not try super hard about that we may never know. There was a line I recall where Gemma says Min doesn’t really mind which pronouns Gemma uses, but there were also the ones they did use, and Gemma choosing to ignore that, even given the pass felt a tad rude.
I’ve given this 2.5 stars so clearly I wasn’t the biggest fan of the book. I remember the feelings Gemma develops for Sarah, and a few scenes with Min, but I can’t say I remember much else about it I’m afraid.
You can purchase Solve for i via the following
Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust | Audible
