Maya is in an experimental phase in her life, quite literally. Going into the summer after graduating high school and losing her mother to cancer, Maya’s world is in a state of emulsion — droplets that aren’t mixing together in the right way. Whit, her boyfriend of over a year, dumps her for another girl. Her dad is more concerned with carabiners than college preparations. Her best friend, another boy, is leaving for college at the end of the summer. Maya’s summer plan consisted of transcribing notes from a college professor at MIT, where her mother had previously worked as a chemist and where Maya would be attending in the fall. But shortly after the implosion of her love life, Maya discovered a notebook of her mother’s with field notes on an secret experiment with a serum containing pheromones to spice up the mother’s relationship with her dad. With the help of a PhD candidate in the lab at MIT who had also worked on this secret project, Maya devises a way to continue the experiment, the goal of which is to get her boyfriend back. A true love story without many surprises, Meredith Goldstein gives readers a character that has a little fun while figuring out with which guy she really has the right chemistry. Recommended for hopeless romantics who like clean finishes.