Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie-and that he's deaf.

The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony. Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover ( Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson. Alien/Martin becomes more expert on us humans than dozens of self-help–book authors: “I felt blue with sadness, red with rage and green with envy. Turns out, human/Martin was an arrogant jerk, while alien/Martin falls hard for our little blue planet, for our contradictions and our mortality, our joys and our follies, for the Beach Boys and Emily Dickinson. Haig goes all-in on the alien-goes-native humor, and then he goes further. He falls away from the rational principles of his distant world, develops a taste for crunchy whole-nut peanut butter and Australian wine, admiration for 'his' dog, Newton, love for 'his' wife, Isobel, and Gulliver, 'his' angst-y teen son. And in spite of extraordinary Vonnadorian technology, he is, to quote Foghorn Leghorn, about as sharp as a bag of wet mice, and a softie to boot. Our alien assassin is narrator and protagonist. Alien/Martin assumes the shape and identity of human/Martin to insinuate himself into the world. They are so concerned, in fact, they kidnap Professor Martin, of Cambridge University, and send a Vonnadorian to destroy the proof and kill everyone Martin informed.

The Vonnadorians, in their wisdom, believe we humans are unprepared for this breakthrough. This is big news in a galaxy far, far away. A mathematical problem of fiendish difficulty, it explains the distribution of prime numbers.

Professor Andrew Martin has solved the Riemann hypothesis. A fish-out-of water mashup where the water is Earth, and the fish is an extraterrestrial.

The humans matt haig reviews