Yeva is a Ukrainian malacologist who operates a mobile laboratory out of a retrofitted trailer. She travels the country attempting to rescue and breed endangered snail species. Suffering from deep burnout and a dwindling snail population, she participates in international romance tours to fund her work while secretly planning her own death by suicide. Her profound isolation changes when a teenager forces her into a kidnapping scheme.

Nastia is an 18-year-old woman posing as an available bride on an international romance tour. She restricts her eating and alters her appearance to fit a stereotypical mold for Western bachelors. Behind this facade, she organizes a mass kidnapping scheme designed to deter the marriage industry and provoke a reaction from her missing activist mother.

Pasha is a 38-year-old Ukrainian Canadian mechanical engineer attending the romance tour. Uprooted from Kyiv at age eight, he feels intense pressure from his immigrant parents and a deep alienation from Canadian society. He returns to his birth country on a one-way ticket, hoping to find a traditional wife and reclaim the cultural identity he believes he lost.

Sol is an English literature student and Nastia's older sister. She works as an interpreter on the romance tours, functioning as a ventriloquist who fabricates the personality of her sister's bride persona. Highly pragmatic and protective, she initially tries to mitigate her sister's dangerous schemes before deciding to actively participate in the abduction.

Iolanta is the famous founder of Komod, a radical feminist protest group that stages provocative demonstrations against the international marriage industry. She disappeared eight months before the events of the story, leaving her daughters with a heavy emotional burden. Her militant legacy informs her children's actions.

Maria is a Ukrainian Canadian author operating in the novel's metafictional interludes. Living in a Vancouver-area attic, she struggles to draft a novel about a marriage agency while watching the real-life Russian invasion of her homeland unfold on the news. She feels severe diaspora guilt and questions her right to write about the conflict from safety.

Bertrand is a charismatic and highly confident app developer attending the romance tour to find a bride and recruit cheap tech talent. Even after being locked in a trailer during a military invasion, he refuses to believe the danger is real, insisting the explosions are either staged sound effects or a hoax.

Grandfather is a retired thermal engineer living in occupied Kherson. He meticulously maintains decades-long archives of family photographs and notebooks. Despite the active conflict, he stubbornly refuses to leave his apartment, prioritizing his historical records and familiar surroundings over physical evacuation.

Masha is the Canadian-based founder of the Romeo Meets Yulia marriage agency. She manages her business remotely from an attic and treats her enterprise as an empowering community, though she swiftly moves to protect her company's reputation when the bachelors go missing.

Kevin is a Hawaiian snail conservationist who tracks extinction timestamps. He helped design the mobile laboratory and frequently corresponds with its driver by radio, though their relationship becomes strained when he introduces romantic intentions into their professional bond.

Lefty is a rare tree snail whose shell spirals to the left. Due to this biological quirk, he cannot mate with the vast majority of his species, making him completely isolated and highly prized by his caretaker.

Bill is the eldest bachelor on the romance tour. A mentor to at-risk boys in his home country, he reframes the group's terrifying captivity in the trailer as a necessary trial that will separate true romance from superficial connection.

Rufus is a demanding literary agent. He heavily critiques his client's overdue manuscript, comparing it to disconnected yurts rather than a cohesive novel, and pushes for marketable material.

Efrosinia is an administrator for the Romeo Meets Yulia marriage agency in Ukraine. She runs the induction sessions for the local women and frantically tries to manage the crisis when multiple foreign clients vanish.

Ovechkin is a senior Russian soldier operating in occupied territory. He discovers the hidden mobile lab and its occupants, confronting the bachelors during a tense standoff.

A traditional Ukrainian parent who struggles to understand her daughter's asexual identity. She frequently pressures her daughter to find a husband, prioritizing marital status over emotional compatibility.

Immigrants who moved their family from Ukraine to Canada to seek economic stability. They assimilated aggressively into Western culture, pushing their son toward practical careers while abandoning their native language.