The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend—a poet-turned-marketer named Adam—have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. Jokingly, Adam suggests she just “marry rich.”

But our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with dating: martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a “socialist” trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County.

Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles. And as doubts begin to creep in about her marriage project, it suddenly seems possible that the eligible prospect she’s been looking for has been beneath her nose the entire time.

If you, like me, are a spreadsheet nerd, then you know there’s nothing quite as satisfying as organizing your life into a series of delightfully colored little rectangles. I have spreadsheets for my job, spreadsheets for my budget, and even a spreadsheet to track my personal reading. But Mariam Rahmani’s debut novel Liquid takes this passion into territory even I hadn’t yet considered: What if a spreadsheet could also provide solutions for your love life?

Liquid begins with its nameless narrator at a crossroads: Her PhD has not provided the financial stability or career satisfaction she hoped for, and her romantic prospects are even more disheartening. The solution? A master spreadsheet. One hundred dates with wealthy men and women across Los Angeles should lead her straight to the happily-ever-after she dreams of—but as her seemingly perfect plan spins farther out of control, she begins to question what she’s actually looking for from life and from love.

Funny, poignant, and sharp-edged, Liquid is the kind of literary fiction that gets me excited to keep reading. It’s a love story for the modern era, and whether you’re a cynic or a romantic—or simply a fan of spreadsheets—there will definitely be something within its pages for you to enjoy.