The Page 69 Test: "The One"

Monday, March 12, 2018

"The One"

John Marrs is a freelance journalist based in London, England, who has spent the last twenty years interviewing celebrities from the world of television, film and

music for national newspapers and magazines. His novels include The Wronged Sons, Welcome To Wherever You Are, and, newly released in the US, The One.

Marrs applied the Page 69 Test to The One and reported the following:

By the time you reach page 69 of The One, you will have met each of my five main characters, whose stories are contained within their own chapters. The book concentrates on five men and women who for one reason or another, have chosen science over fate to try and find their soul mates. Set in a time when a DNA test is all it takes to find The One you are guaranteed to fall in love with, it’s Nick who comes into focus on page 69. He’s a little different to some of the others as he already has a fiancée, Sally. She is pushing them both to take the test just to make sure they are definitely suited. However when Nick gets his results back, he learns he is actually Matched with a man. Page 69 finds him coming to terms with that revelation and he is in complete denial. He had his life planned out before him – he was to marry Sally and they’d spend the rest of their lives together. But now he’s supposedly destined to be with someone of the same sex, where does that leave him? Will curiosity get the better of him and will he meet his Match? How can you fall in love with a gender you aren’t attracted to?

Page 69 is quite indicative of the rest of The One. I have tried to create a novel full of twists and turns as each character comes to terms with their differing futures. Hopefully such predicament, like those on that particular page, will make the reader question what they might do if they were faced with my characters’ dilemmas.