The Soulmate Strategy: My Imperfect Plan to Conquer Heartbreak and Find True Love
Corey Seemiller
She Writes Press, 2026, 392 pages
$17.99

Reviewed by Kara Zajac

This story is exactly why I love memoirs. You experience someone’s real journey right along with them: the raw, relatable vulnerability of heartbreak and recovery. It’s a story so personal that by the end, you feel like one of Corey’s friends. The Soulmate Strategy is a hilariously funny tale, yet it’s painful to read at times because you just want to wrap her in a bear hug and tell her: it’s going to be okay. Keep going! Corey captures the magic of memoir in this heartfelt quest to find the one. As a scientific person myself, I completely related to her equation-based approach to healing and love: make a step-by-step recovery list, meticulously complete each task, and poof. The result should be the perfect happily-ever-after, right? If only life and love were that easy.

Corey has been successful in her life. She has a great career that she’s truly passionate about, is raising a healthy-minded, well-rounded child, and has friends, but there’s one thing that’s missing: a soulmate. After watching her parents stay in a difficult, mismatched marriage for too long, she vowed early on never to repeat their mistakes. What she has learned through observation is that love eventually leaves, as with her dad when he packed his bags and went away, and two failed long-term relationships that ended in breakup.

Determined to fix the problem by strategically getting over heartbreak, she tries to hurry through the suffering and find true happiness by joining meetup groups, working out her angst through strenuous hikes, creating mantras, going to therapy, and having several close friends to bounce ideas off of. She writes her step-by-step catalog into what she calls “The Plan.” When The Plan doesn’t create her desired outcome within the specific timeline she envisions, Corey goes to greater lengths, getting advice from several different psychics, practicing the law of attraction, adding Reiki and crystal therapy to her routine, doing online “practice” dating, and eventually finding a past-life regression therapist (which sounded so cool; I can’t wait to find someone near me who does this).

Once she has narrowed the search to two candidates, Corey continues to ruminate, overanalyzing her connection to each person, placing much emphasis on the psychic’s details and looking for universal signs instead of embracing her own feelings, hoping that her choice will be the right one. While everyone can learn from their past mistakes, we see Corey’s almost paralyzing fear of making the wrong decision, so much so that she keeps the psychic’s analysis from her two prospects, hoping that external signs will choose for her and guide her path correctly. However, Corey eventually realizes that not everything can be left up to fate. The confusion she felt from waiting for signs from the universe was, in due time, replaced by trust in herself. She says: “While I do still trust the universe, I learned the value of embracing my own free will and not overemphasizing the importance of spiritual messaging during vulnerable times in my life” (372).

At the end of the book, Corey reveals The Plan and analyzes the wins and/or failures of each step, which I thought captured the essence of her experience completely. As a writer with two degrees in science, I relate to her approach of creating a step-by-step plan to achieve the end result, which was funny, considering it was about finding your true love, but completely compatible with a science-based brain. It was a nice personalized detail to include; it almost made me want to print it out and tape it to my closet door. For example, she says:

I’ve never been one to keep a secret. So, holding on to the psychic prophecy not only weighed on my conscience but also put at risk two very important relationships in my life. I will forever be grateful to both of them for accepting my confession and choosing to continue our connections. The whole situation, though, prompted me to add “Be transparent” to The Plan so I would never find myself harboring another secret (373).

Another hilarious aspect I completely loved about this book: instead of using the characters’ names, she kept them anonymous by labeling them with details specific to each one. There’s the friend she met at a meetup pool party, Naked and Afraid; the social-media friend, TikTok; the online date with no in-person chemistry, East Coast; the date where they went shopping, Pants; and the hiking friend who loved bird watching, Birds. This was a very creative and comedic way to get around the stickiness of friends and loved ones being overwhelmed and concerned when included in your life’s story.

By the end, Corey realizes that healing takes time and, sometimes, you just have to go with the flow and let life unfold on its own. This book is for anyone who has struggled with perfectionism, and offers the reader a chance to learn through someone else’s struggle to heal and move past their childhood trauma, finding love tightly packaged with endearment, laughter, and sensitivity. I feel anyone can learn about themselves by reading and understanding someone else’s struggles. The story is also a reminder that we all have similar struggles, and no one goes through life alone. If you’d like to follow Corey, you can find her inspirational stories on TikTok (@coreyseemiller) and Instagram (@lesbianlovelessons.corey), where she interviews lesbian-identified people who share a lesson they have learned about love.

Kara Zajac is a freelance writer, chiropractor, mother, wife, entrepreneur, and musician. Her debut, The Significance of Curly Hair: A Loving Memoir of Life and Loss, won the 2025 IPPY Silver Medal for Inspirational Nonfiction and was chosen for “The Best Books We Read in 2024” by the Independent Book Review. Its follow-up, The Special Recipe for Making Babies, was a finalist in 2022’s Charlotte Lit/ Lit South Awards for Nonfiction. Kara’s work has been published in Bay Area Reporter, Lesbian.com, Voraka Magazine, Story Circle Anthology, Imperfect Life Magazine, Ripped Jeans and Bifocals, and Just BE Parenting. Kara keeps people laughing with her blog www.KaraZajac.com and is happy to speak at book clubs and grief-support groups. She resides in North Georgia with her wife, Kim, and daughter, Senia Mae.