I am not normally a fan of romance preferring a good crime or mystery, but thought I would give this a try as it looked a little bit different to the usual romantic sort of read these days.

Art is a brilliant mathematician and his sister Mimi has spent her life protecting and looking after him, as while he has a powerful brain and can grasp mind-numbingly complicated maths problems, he has difficulty with day to day life and understanding emotions.

Their parents died in an apparent joint suicide when the children were young. Now in their 30’s, after so many years of just being there for each other, Mimi has decided she needs to find love before life passes her by, but she is torn between her heart and not wanting to leave her brother.

Art demands that she allow him to look after the dating apps as his grasp of probabilities and algorithms means he will know when she finds the right person. Of course, that doesn’t go to plan when she meets Frank accidentally at a maths award ceremony. But he hides a secret or two of his own.

Some reviewers have said it was too slow in the beginning but I enjoyed reading about the family dynamics and the feeling of duty especially between brother and sister. A good read even if some of the math went way over my head!

This is a very intense book because of the subject matter. I loved the writing and the formatting of the chapters to switch perspectives. The way the family relationships was depicted made this book.

First of all, having finished this book, I'd like to give both Art and Mimi a huge hug - though, I doubt if both characters would be entirely comfortable with that action.
Anyway, moving on with my review.
Art and Mimi (Naomi) are the siblings at the centre of the novel, "The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything". Art is the older sibling and believes himself to be responsible for the care and welfare of his younger sister. However, Mimi is not a child in need of being looked after, but is in fact an adult and like her brother, also in her thirties. Their lives are very much intertwined and Mimi spends much of her daily life cooking, shopping and caring for Art. Although not specifically stated in the story, the reader is given the impression that Art may be neurodivergent due to the rigid structures he relies on and difficulties he faces with social and emotional situations. Mimi provides support and advice to Art. Art meanwhile, is a highly respected mathematics expert and is researching a maths problem, where security is a massive consideration.
Their lives have been advancing as normal for some time but all is about to change when Mimi starts to fall in love and Art is suspicious that Frank has deeply alterior motives.
The story begins when Art has an accident and the police arrive to speak with Mimi. Then we step back in time, and learn about the siblings, the 33% experiment and how Mimi met Frank. This approach allows the author to slowly reveal how events have really occurred and not just the perceived actions from Mimi's viewpoint. We are also afforded the opportunity to see how Art views the situation and this proves to be eye-opening.
There are many 'trigger' topics covered in the novel such as suicide, sexual assault and death but the author attempts to handle each topic in a sensitive manner and using appropriate language.

Mathematical, loss, siblings, heartache. A totally different read for!y normal genre. A very slow beginning and it was a skim read of I'm honest as it wasn't my cup of tea. Certainly different.

Quirky and original. Mathematics is woven very cleverly throughout the story. If I was into maths I think I would appreciate it more. However it was still a good book.

A story of two siblings, a brother and sister, who look out for one another and have only got each other after the untimely demise of both their parents.
Art is a keen mathematician with ideas and fixations that mean his sister, Mimi, feels she could never leave him alone. And he is on the edge of solving a specific mathematical problem that mathematicians the world over are trying to do. His work is like an obsession.
But, she wants more in life, including romantic love, which Art cannot understand, seeing as in his eyes and mind, there is a reason for everything and a fact to back it up.
She meets Frank at a Mathematics awards ceremony, and he seems perfect. Too perfect, according to Art, whose mathematical equation Frank hasn't fallen in line with.
Okay, so I will admit this was a slow starter. There was a lot to unravel before things picked up and made me want to read more, but the book's last quarter really pulled me in.
The siblings have a tragic past, shrouded in cover-ups and tales, that need to be uncovered for them to truly move on in life. But it takes time for the reader to really understand what is going on and why they need to be invested.
I'm glad I finished it, but it was hard to get into. If you do read it, persevere. It gets better and easier to understand as you go on, promise!
Many thanks to Netgalley and PanMacmillan for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Quirky and unusual. I found it quite difficult to get past the mathematical references as I developed an allergy to maths at school, having never got to grips with it. Worth persevering to the end, but quite slow to get started.

For some reason it took me a while to get into this, to care about the characters, but I am so glad that I persevered because by the end I was reading late into the night. There is a lot going on here, some high-level maths, sibling care and love in many formats but advanced maths can sometimes add 2 and 2 and make crazy numbers. Art is the very special mathematician and Mimi is his sister who would like to find a boyfriend. Both will have to unravel assumptions and rework events to find what they are looking for. This is truly an original love story that will keep you intrigued and warm your heart.

I really enjoyed reading The Theory of Not Quite Everything, it felt like a modern romcom with some much bigger issues behind it. Art & Mimi are adult brother and sister, still living together in their 30s after the untimely deaths of both of their parents. The siblings are very intertwined together, with Mimi doing a lot of the practical day to day life admin for the two of them, whilst Art is busy trying to work out an insanely complicated maths problem. Art has some kind of neurodiversity, its not specified but I was assuming some kind of autism, which makes some of the social & personal emotional elements of typical life hard for him to navigate. Mimi, on the other hand, has felt isolated for some time and decides its now time to try and find a partner, aware of how this might upset the balance between her and her brother.

The two of them attend a Maths Conference where Mimi meets Frank, and the two of them hit it off from the outset. She doesn't want to say who she is as her brother is a big name in the maths world, and she wants to be seen for herself, not as a sibling. They have the most fabulous dates- planet-hopping was new to me- but as they get closer and closer, Mimi realises that she has to come clean with him. But she's not the only one hiding some big secrets....

I really felt for both of the siblings in this, their characters felt real and well created; the challenges that they faced, professionally, personally and with one another, were sometimes painful to read but felt true to their life situation. The absolute loyalty that Mimi has to Art, battling with her desire to have her own life and make her own choices - I didnt envy her at all. The story had me hooked and I read it in a couple of sittings. There are some heavier aspects to the book including parental death, suicide, injuries and unwanted sexual attention - so its a bit heavier than a lot of books it might be compared to, but I like a complicated family set up, so it was right up my street.
I have been wavering between 4 and 5 stars - but as its a debut novel, it deserves all the praise so 5 stars from me.
And the cover art is perfect- so well done to Lucy Scholes and her team for that, so eyecatching and different

In my own humble opinion, I thought this a very niche subject for a novel – maths! The thing is, Art (short for Arthur) is just a teeny bit obsessed with maths and nursed a most persistent desire to be the mathematician to find a solution to some maths problem that the whole of academia was racing to achieve. For a good part of the book he came across as quite an unlikeable person. Obsessive to the extent of being completely neurotic. He appeared to be very controlling when it came to his younger sister, always wanting to know where she was, wanting her to use his self developed dating app to find a suitable boyfriend (based on probability) perhaps? I don’t know, I’m no mathematician myself, but I’d guess that was what he was basing it on.

His sister Mimi was getting a little tired of his controlling behaviour. She struggled between her loyalty and love for her brother and her need for some independence and to be able to do things her own way, especially when it came to finding a little romance.

Mimi then meets Frank and whilst she falls very much in love with him, her brother continues to be a thorn in her side with Art suggesting to Mimi that Frank may not be telling her everything, without any justification for his suspicions, other than his own apparent possessiveness. I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed the majority of the book. I thought all the characters were so weird that I found myself keep wondering why I was even reading it. When you reach the end and all the reasons behind the odd idiosyncrasies of all the characters come to light, then it makes sense. Unfortunately, up to that point, I just felt like we were plodding along aimlessly.

The last 10% was where all the reveals came in. This last part I did enjoy. It is moving and there are some surprises that I really didn’t see coming. I was completely engrossed by the end, glad that I held on and finished it, as there were quite a few ‘aha’ moments. It’s just a shame I couldn’t get invested in the characters until almost the end of the book.

So excited to get an early chance to read this book. I started it tonight and I’m already halfway through but wanted to give some feedback straight away as this is amazing! Definitely going to be one of the top releases of 2023.
Love the sibling relationship, I feel like we don’t get to read really well written siblings that often.
I’ll be back with a full review when I finish this, and I don’t think it will be long to wait!!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for my review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel - a real 'slow burner' but one which is definitely worth a read. Fantastic characters and a delve into the relationships that tie us all.

Thank you for offering me The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything by Kara Gnodde. This is a wonderful book about acceptance, love and trust. The story is offbeat and unusual, and twists and turns in unexpected ways as the characters do their best to navigate the challenges life throws at them. And there are many such challenges. I had no idea how the novel would end, but was more than happy with the way it did.
(One teeny point - the GCS is said in the book to stand for the Glasgow Cognitive Scale. It actually stands for the Glasgow Coma Scale.)
In short, I loved it!

The sad and at times humorous story of orphans Mimi and her brother Art, told in the words of Mimi in an extremely engaging theoretical fashion.
I found myself drawn to these endearing characters and how Mimi, enslaved to her autistic brother, tries to break away from him and find herself a new man in her life to have a relationship with.
Wow! So many surprises, twists and turns which kept me guessing right to the end.