[ARC Review] Technically Yours by Denise Williams
Pearl Harris has learned the hard way to be careful in work and in love. She has the chance to make lasting change at OurCode—a nonprofit aimed at inspiring high schoolers to code—but a recent scandal puts its reputation at risk. Further complicating things, Pearl didn't expect the one man she never stopped thinking about to join as the newest member of her board of directors.
Cord Matthews fell for Pearl when they met in an elevator eight years ago. She’s just his type: smart, capable, and makes him laugh, but when she broke his heart, he decided love wasn't for him. When they reconnect after years with no contact, Cord is tempted to consider breaking his ban on serious relationships. But going public with a romance between them might derail Pearl’s career and the progress she’s made at OurCode.
While Pearl and Cord are both hesitant to trust their feelings and take a risk, it soon becomes impossible to keep ignoring the electricity between them. Cord is a skilled programmer, but a workplace romance might spell disaster for both of them--and love isn’t easily debugged.
MY THOUGHTS: Somehow, Denise Williams managed to include several tropes that I generally don't care for in Technically Yours and I still loved Pearl and Cord's romance. If that doesn't show the power of great writing and wonderful character development, I don't know what does. What may be even more important than the romance in this book is the fantastically diverse and inclusive representation within the computer science/STEM fields. I absolutely loved seeing that featured so prominently within the story.
Pearl and Cord were just really well done main characters. I loved everything from their rocky past to the way they worked through their present-day issues. There were a lot of important discussions for these two, from ethical work relationships to where a man like Cord could even fit in at an organization like OurCode. As art imitates life, it was great to not only see this type of dialogue happening on the page, but also see their different approaches and solutions to inclusive advocacy.
I love seeing inclusive STEM representation in books; however, I am not very STEM-minded on my own. That being said, Williams didn't include any overly scientific terms that would take readers out of the story. Even when coding jargon was used that went over my head, it was used in a way that didn't affect my overall understanding of the scene itself.
Technically Yours might just include some of my favorite spice that Williams has ever done. I loved a lot of the things that Cord and Pearl got up to, and I loved the people they became in those scenes: hopeful, but realistic.
Support systems were important to both Cord and Pearl, and that stability was definitely a plus in this story. Cord had friends like Wes and Britta (whom readers might remember from The Fastest Way to Fall), and Pearl had her sisters and her sister's teenage kid, Tye. I loved seeing both main characters not exist in a silo when it came to their romance.
Overall, Technically Yours was a fun, steamy read that kept the importance of diversity and inclusion in STEM at front and center. I love romances with heart, and Cord and Pearl definitely had it.
[A huge thank you to the author for providing a review copy of this title! All opinions are my own.]
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Release date: 12/5/23
Format: eARC
eARC obtained via: NetGalley widget
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