One & Only is a work of contemporary romantic fiction, a genre centering on love and relationships that commonly relies on tropes like opposites-attract, age-gap, best-friend’s brother, forbidden love, second-chance, and forced proximity to fuel plotlines and to create tension between the love interests. Such tropes offer readers a familial narrative scaffolding to navigate unexpected love stories. Within this genre, One & Only is particularly in conversation with works including Rebecca Serle’s Once and Again, which combines a broadly realistic look at marriage and missed opportunities with a protagonist who can turn back time, Suzanne Park’s One Last Word, which centers on a Korean American woman working in the tech industry, and Tia Williams’s A Love Song for Ricki Wilde, which follows an era-spanning love story from the Harlem Renaissance to 21st-century New York. 

The novel can also be classified under the romantic comedy subgenre. Traditional romantic comedies follow a primary love story between two characters who meet by chance—in a scene called the meet-cute—and who struggle either to acknowledge their feelings for each other or to overcome the odds working against their potential relationship. Such stories often include best-friend sidekicks who challenge or encourage the romantic leads and a complex network of community dynamics that either foster or discourage the potential lovers’ happily-ever-after.

Goo’s version of the romantic comedy both borrows from and toys with the conventions of the genre. On the one hand, One & Only is a traditional love story in which the heroine and protagonist, Cassia Park, is desperate to find her soulmate and create a happy, secure future for herself. Cassia’s best friend, Marcella, provides commentary on Cassia’s romantic troubles, challenging her to either accept or explore love. The narrative often references popular rom-coms (like Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally) and makes overt allusions to the absurdity of writing off true love just because of an age gap. Other familiar plot devices include the love triangle and the forced proximity trope, all of which complicate Cassia’s chances at happiness with her ideal partner and challenge her to follow her heart.

At the same time, Cassia’s decision to reject her fated love and be with Ellis instead subverts the expectations of the genre. Cassia’s whole life has been built around a guaranteed happy ending with her soulmate, but she makes the choice to let this fantasy go to be with someone different—someone she believes she can make a happy life with even if they aren’t written in the proverbial stars. This narrative arc implies that while romance’s familiar storylines might offer cozy escapes from reality, they can also instill inaccurate notions surrounding love. Once the individual defines love on their own terms—as Cassia learns to do in One & Only—they have a better chance of fostering a lasting relationship. In these ways, Goo subtly resists the parameters of the genre she writes within, testing cultural notions of “one true love” and the templated “happy ending” that a given culture prescribes. Cassia still finds happiness and love, but she does so on her own terms.

Goo’s novel also disrupts the contemporary romance genre by presenting round, complex characters and incorporating elements of magical realism. One & Only is in conversation with works like Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold—and its companion titles—in that it draws on traditional Asian practices and beliefs surrounding prophecy and witchcraft. Cassia’s magical ability to read faces and enter others’ past lives lends nuance to her search for true love and complicates her broader work to reconcile with her fraught history.