Bonding

A uniquely modern love story about three people who might just change the world, if only they could stop sleeping with each other . . .

Mary is thirty-two. She shares a flat with someone she barely knows and works in a dull marketing job. When she is abruptly fired from her job she books an impulsive mini-break in Ibiza while wandering through Westfield shopping centre. On holiday she meets Tom and gets so high she can’t remember sleeping with him.

Back in London, she is contacted by Lara, a woman from her past, and someone she used to have a relationship with. Lara works at Openr, an innovative dating app for people seeking non-traditional relationships. Lara offers Mary exactly what she needs: a job. But Openr knows no limits and Lara will stop at nothing to create a new brand and a new idea, a perfectly flat marketplace in which everyone is equally attracted to everyone else. So much so that when the antidepressant drug eudaxa that Tom is working on starts being taken in higher dosages at Openr’s parties, Lara lets the controversy go viral . . .

Set against the backdrop of the booming start-up economy, Melissa Franklin's Bonding is a story about romance, addiction, how we live and ultimately, whether or not this generation can ever fall in love again.