The Shared Pulse by Eda Uzunkara

Your cracks are not flaws. They are openings. The Shared Pulse is a contemporary novel set in Istanbul, between systems that promise certainty and relationships that resist being solved.

Alev lives by the algorithm of her AI life coach. Toprak manipulates his compatibility score on a dating app designed to predict desire.As their lives intersect, the story asks what happens when intimacy is measured, tracked, and optimized—and what it costs to stay present inside that logic.

Can love survive when it is treated as an optimization problem?

This is a journey through the glitches of the heart—a reminder that love is not a noun, but a verb.

Editorial Review;

“Philosophically observant and fascinating speculative romance that integrates technology and humanity into concepts of dating and love.”

What elevates all of this is the author’s language. The prose is sensory and alive, for example, “The night was already pressing the windows,” or “The city below stretched its limbs.” The author’s command of wordcraft feels effortless and immersive, making the emotional and philosophical questions feel real and alive rather than abstract. This is speculative fiction at its best: using near-future technology to interrogate identity, intimacy, and the radical idea that our cracks aren’t flaws at all: they’re openings.

— Rachel Barnard, Author and Editorial Reviewer