One & Only: A Read with Jenna Pick

by Maurene Goo

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • “A wildly good time . . . a swoony, funny, romantic novel” (Rebecca Serle, New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years) about a woman thrown a curveball by fate, and the family secret that makes her question everything.

“Warm, lush, addictive, with just the right amount of magic.” —Veronica Roth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Divergent

“Meet my new favorite book!” —Katherine Center, New York Times bestselling author of The Bodyguard

She knows what her happily ever after looks like. And it’s not him.

Cassia Park believes in soul mates. Fated love stories. It’s her family business, after all—for centuries, from Korea to Los Angeles, Park women have peered into clients’ past lives to find their one true love, their fated. This magical secret is why One & Only Matchmaking has a 100% guarantee…for everyone but Cassia.

For ten years, Cass has been searching for her fated, a man named Daniel Nam. But he’s still nowhere to be found.

And so, on the eve of her 40th birthday, Cass decides to do something for herself. She impulsively has a fling with Ellis. He’s twenty-eight, indecently handsome, and not destined to be the love of her life. But she’s surprised by their connection and their fling feels like something more—up to the moment he introduces her to his boss…Daniel Nam.

As she battles between fate and chance, head and heart, a family secret is revealed that will make her question everything she’s ever known. Cassia will have to decide if she’ll follow her fate…or make her own.

Release date: February 3, 2026

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 368

Sample

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1

Depending on the season, the office on a Monday morning smells like roses, lilies, or peonies.

Because it's May, the month of my birthday, it smells like lilacs.

Like I need the reminder.

The flower delivery always arrives just as I've disarmed the security system. The delivery girl, Katie, brushes by me quickly and places the first arrangement-lush lilacs and seeded eucalyptus-on the marble entryway table. "Morning, Cass!" she says on her way out to fetch the rest, her Land Cruiser parked along the curb.

"Morning," I call out as I walk through our waiting room-a large space filled with floral-patterned sofas and chairs, high-piled cream rugs, and oak tables. Sunshine streams through a row of windows looking out into a courtyard set up with white iron benches and giant potted ficus. A black walnut tree shades it all, its skinny leaves shedding onto the dark-green cushions of the benches. The morning light is soft, and I take a moment to appreciate it before the day gets away from me. I close my eyes against the sunshine, willing myself into the present moment. Not the coming birthday.

When the last of the flowers are placed on the front desk, Katie leaves and our office manager, Shreya, arrives. "Please let me take over," she says to me, brusquely, at the espresso machine where I'm starting to make myself a cappuccino. Shreya is young but bossy, because she is the eldest daughter to Indian immigrants, or so she tells us in all the memes she posts. She nudges me out of the way as she sets out delicate cups and saucers on the counter.

I let her, because her drinks are so much better than mine, and lean against the counter. "How was your weekend?"

"Good," she says, keeping her eyes fixed on the milk frother. "Oh, I got an update from the private investigator. About . . ." She glances around before whispering, "Daniel."

I lean in close, my heart jumping into my throat. "And?"

She shakes her head once. "Sorry. He ended up being a college student. In Florida."

Damn. "Thanks, anyway."

She softens for a minute and even makes a move to touch my shoulder before stopping herself. "We'll find him. I know it."

I nod tightly, trying not to acknowledge the little flare of hope I had that maybe I'd get this one big thing-the biggest thing-off my list before I turned forty. But I don't want to make Shreya feel bad so I joke, "At least I can cancel that bikini wax, huh?"

"Cassia."

"Gotcha. Regressive, internalized misogyny alert."

She gives me a wink and hands me my latte. "Proud of you."

A chaotic jumble of noise echoes through our lobby and I know the interns have descended. Matteo and Lila walk in wearing sunglasses and various low-waisted bottoms. Lila is drinking something out of a giant 7-Eleven plastic cup and Matteo is eating a powdered donut, the sugar dusting his Fair Isle sweater.

"The nerve of your metabolisms," I say as Shreya hands me my cappuccino, the cup clinking against the saucer. The delicate bone china is at my grandmother's insistence. We've broken about half of the beautiful cups, but I have secretly replaced them with eBay finds over the years. I now know how to spot an original Spode Italian Blue from a mile away. Halmoni never has to know.

"Coffee's gross," Lila mutters as she grabs a banana out of a fruit bowl. Also at my grandmother's insistence.

While I balance my coffee and red suede tote on the way to my office, the front door flies open again.

"I almost rammed into one of those damned robot cars," Sunny says in greeting. She shakes out her Burberry trench and hangs it on the coatrack. My aunt's bob is streaked with gray and impeccable, as are her gingham capri pants and red cashmere sweater. As the marketing and publicity director, she is our most public-facing employee and always looks the part.

"On purpose?" I ask, my lips hitching into a smile.

She rolls her eyes as she walks by me, reaching out briefly to squeeze my upper arm. "Morning, Cass." Then she heads to her office, leaving behind a scent of something expensive and subtle.

The phone rings and Shreya rushes to the front desk to answer. "One & Only Matchmaking," she answers. "How can I help you?" She hands me a folder wordlessly as I sidle by and I add it to my load.

My day really begins with my calendar-my ride or die. I keep calendars for not just my work life, but a shared one for my family (so I can keep track of their endless old-people doctor appointments), and one for me and my best friend, Marcella-which includes her kids' various doctor appointments and extracurriculars on days she needs me to help her out. I wake my computer and check out the day's schedule. Four readings, oof. Then a meeting with our Web designer about some changes we need on our website. Once the calendar is sorted, I make my to-do spreadsheet. This is a list that would, in Marcella's words, make Microsoft Excel's creator jizz his pants. Since I'm director of operations at One & Only, meticulous spreadsheeting comes with the territory. And an unhinged obsession with schedules and routines doesn't hurt, either.

A small figure pops into frame. It's my grandmother's sister-who I call Emoni, a nonsense honorific I made up as a child because I couldn't actually pronounce the proper Korean name for Great Aunt, "Emo Halmoni."

"Cassie-ya," she says with urgency. "My computer is doing the thing again."

We have an on-call IT contractor, but I get up anyway, never able to deny Emoni anything. "You need to stop clicking on YouTube ads."

"I didn't!" she insists, her perm bouncing in indignation as we walk down the hall to her office. "At least, maybe I didn't." Emoni is technically the VP and chief financial officer of One & Only, though her hours are pretty much part-time now. But Emoni was never one to sit still so she remains very much a part of the business-a family business run under the thumb of a true matriarch.

We pass the bullpen with the interns. "I tried that poker strategy you taught me," Matteo calls out to Emoni. "For the first time ever, I made out like a bandit on poker night." Emoni truly loves money. Any time she doesn't spend in her garden is spent at the casinos. It's not a gambling problem per se because she always manages to win.

Emoni sniffs with satisfaction. "I have so much more to teach you, let's meet at lunch. Lila, did you try that egg soufflé recipe? Because you need more protein. Your arms-"

I steer her away. "All right, back to work, minions!" Farther away, I look at Emoni. "You can't talk about people's bodies."

"I'm old, I can do anything."

After her computer is sorted out (YouTube ads strike again-this time from a video about a penguin who delivers groceries in a small Japanese town), I head back to my office.

"Cass?" Shreya motions to me discreetly from the front desk.

I walk over. "Yeah?"

"You have a last-minute reading scheduled for, well, now if you can do it."

"I already have four readings today, you know they take a lot-"

"You might want to see who it is." She jerks her head toward the waiting room. There's a woman sitting on the sofa, flipping through a magazine. When she tilts her head up, I catch a glimpse of a very familiar face. Celebrities are not foreign to us here at One & Only-we're in Beverly Hills and our reputation as the best discreet matchmaker in Los Angeles is pretty sterling. Still, the woman in our living room won a Golden Globe this year and is the latest spokesmodel for Dior. It's been splashed all over the internet that she had a messy breakup with her equally high profile musician boyfriend. The latest in a string of bad romances.

I'm pulling up my calendar on my phone, to see if there are any conflicts, when someone says with full authority, "Send her to the reading room in five minutes."

Shreya's back snaps into an impossibly straight line. "Yes, Mrs. Park."

I turn to see Halmoni-my grandmother. The boss. She has made a fashionably late entrance, as always. She's grown shorter, but her presence is still intimidating at eighty-eight years old. Her hair, still fairly dark for her age, is twisted into a low knot on her nape. Her big Chanel sunglasses are still on, and her cheekbones are still on a level with Audrey Hepburn's. She hands her Hermès bag to Shreya, who takes it wordlessly, then lifts an eyebrow at me. Challenging. "Can you handle this reading, Cassia?"

Halmoni has no cute nicknames for me. To her, I am always Cassia. The name my mother, her daughter, gave me. A daughter she can now only see in the shape of my eyes, the stubborn wave in the back of my long hair, and the large feet that accompany my tall frame.

"Yes, of course," I say easily. "You sure you don't want to handle it?"

She waves her head dismissively. "Your halabuji snored all night. Too tired."

I laugh but look at her closely. She is impossibly spry for her nearly ninety years, but age has been creeping up on her and I'm always on high alert. Halmoni notices and scowls. "Go take care of our client."

Right below the surface of my adult veneer is a surly teenager and I roll my eyes. "I was gonna." She makes a quick tsk sound and digs a knuckle into my upper arm. I pretend it hurts but we both know it doesn't, and I make a face at her before she walks away. Halmoni has a hard shell for everyone in the world but her family. And, although you wouldn't necessarily know it at first glance, she saves the softest parts of herself for me.

When I walk into the waiting room, Gemma Flores looks up at me. She is beautiful and tiny like a hummingbird, like all actresses when you see them in real life. Her clothes are very celebrity incognito-a matching set of soft lounge pants and a sweater with a black cap. "Ms. Flores? I'm Cassia Park, it's so great to meet you."

She stands up and shakes my hand, her tennis bracelet pressing into my wrist. "So nice to meet you, too!" She laughs nervously, a husky sound that is familiar to me from watching her on a long-running hospital drama for years. "I kind of can't believe I'm doing this."

I tilt my head. "Why?"

Another nervous laugh. "Just . . . If it got out that I went to a matchmaker, I'd be skewered online. But I can't take any more of the heartbreak, you know?"

Something in me loosens. Gemma Flores may be famous, but she's familiar. I get her. "I know."

Halmoni walks in, her expression warm and serene. This is her client-facing side. "Ms. Gemma Flores, we are such huge fans of yours. We're so happy you've decided to join us here. I'm the founder, Mi-Kyeong Park."

"Thank you, and so nice to meet you, Mrs. Park," Gemma says, everything a bit more relaxed now. "I heard about your agency and your face-reading methods and thought, well, that's something new, right? I'm a little nervous."

Halmoni takes Gemma's hands in hers, grasping them tight. "Don't be nervous. Our family has been matchmaking for centuries. It's a skill that runs in our family, and we were known for it in Korea. We brought it here to Los Angeles in the seventies. So, you're in good hands." She winks and Gemma is charmed. "And yes, we use face-reading, but we blend it with traditional matchmaking practices. This form of matchmaking is unique to our family."

"How does it work? Face-reading I mean."

"Well, you know palm-reading?"

Gemma nods.

"It's like that-but for the face," Halmoni says with an impish smile. "A face is very revealing about a person's character-their strengths and flaws. But it also reveals interests, temperament, and even their future."

Eyes wide, Gemma says, "Wow. But how does that help with matchmaking?"

Halmoni places gentle hands on Gemma's arm. "All this information helps us determine who would be the best match for you. Who we call your 'fated.'"

I've heard this speech so many times but each time it stirs something in me, fills me with an overwhelming emotion that catches in my throat. "And we will find a good match for you. We believe that there's someone out there for everyone. Happiness guaranteed."

Gemma looks properly convinced when she says, "Well, okay! I'm so excited to start this . . . journey!" She follows me through the office, past our brass plaque that reads: We have a 100% success rate for true love. Guaranteed. We've had this guarantee since the business opened and it's one of the reasons why our reputation is so solid. Because it's true-everyone we match stays together.

I take Gemma upstairs, and we pass by a wall of photos documenting the nearly five decades of One & Only's existence. There's an old photo of the first office in Koreatown, a nondescript storefront in a strip mall, next to a billiards hall and Chinese takeout. The leap from that spot to where we're standing today, in a beautiful colonial building in Beverly Hills, feels like a miracle. In the photo, standing in front of that first storefront, are Halmoni, Emoni, my grandfather, and a young Sunny. Holding her hand is another little girl-Evette, my mom.

We enter our reading room-a relaxing space with plush sofas low to the ground, dim lighting coming up from the baseboards, and woven Korean textiles on the walls. String music, played by the traditional Korean instrument called the gayageum, is piped in quietly in the background.

The vibe is very much fancy ancient magic.

Adding to that is the ancestral shrine we keep tucked away in a corner. It's nothing flashy-just a small wood table with two (electric) candles, a stick of incense, and a brass bowl of water. Most Koreans don't keep an ancestral shrine year-round. They only put them up for special holidays like Chuseok in the fall or Lunar New Year if they do it at all. But our family? Well, we're not like most families.

Gemma and I sit across from each other. She looks around, absorbing it all. "Wow, this is such a cool space."

"It's where the magic happens," I say with a smile.

Gemma uncrosses her legs and lets out a breath. "To be honest, I'm not sure if I believe in all this"-she waves her hand around the room-"but at this point . . ."