Relationships should be so simple. You meet someone. You fall in love. If all goes well, that person falls in love with you. You live happily every after.

As Andrew Trees reveals in Decoding Love, this “romantic storyline” has shaped our thinking about relationships for centuries. But the fairy tale is deeply flawed. Researchers today are making shocking discoveries about how and why we choose the people we love.

Drawing from the latest studies in economics, brain science, game theory, evolutionary psychology, and other fields, Decoding Love takes on a topic we all think we understand—how we fall in love—and illustrates that most of our assumptions are wrong. Along the way, Andrew Trees offers surprising new insights into the nature of attraction and desire as well as an intimate look at the strange intersection of romance and the modern world of dating. Throughout, Decoding Love reveals the frequently bizarre scientific findings about human attraction from the powerful influence of smell to a mathematical theory that one must date twelve people before happening upon Mr. or Ms. Right. Everything from a genetic marker for infidelity to the way the pill can sway a woman’s choice of her partner is explored in this astonishing and thoroughly amusing account of what goes into determining why one person falls in love with another.

Page-turning, thought-provoking, and sparkling with wit, Decoding Love is an uncommon look at that most common of human pursuits: falling in love.