There might be a movie here, Planet of the Apes as a rom-com.
This can’t end well, and it doesn’t, as a comedy of manners takes a darker turn. Despite his domestication, Sam occasionally shows signs of being a wild animal. And all of them must contend with another professor, a supervisor to whom Guy reports, who is some sort of alpha male. As Sam and Guy compete for Aimee’s affection (which she shares with both), Aimee and Guy compete for Sam’s favor. Sam can talk with sign language and understand, he responds to treats and to scolding, but he also learns to lie and scheme and manipulate, aping human behavior. And they alternate along different timelines, with Sam’s chapters often reflecting a near future that the humans have yet to experience. Short chapters written to capture his perspective alternate with longer ones that find his human enablers attempting to deal with whatever mischief he has made. As the characters in this novel respond to animal urges and instincts, Sam emerges as the most complex. The chimp, named Sam, also falls in love with Aimee because of the same animal magnetism that attracts Guy. After his marriage falls apart, he falls in love, or lust, with Aimee, whom he's hired to help with his live-in chimpanzee.
Guy Schermerhorn is a professor who's deeply invested in researching the communicative possibilities between humankind and the simian world and who parlays that work into TV appearances. She is a cliché of the innocent young coed when that term was used often and seemingly without condescension. Yet she refuses to use her beauty to manipulate and thus provides this novel with its heart. Aimee Villard is naïve and beautiful, a college student who recognizes how attractive she is because of her effect on men-and a certain chimpanzee. There’s an antic energy to Boyle's latest which comes at the expense of character development. Farce meets tragedy and science meets show business in this romantic triangle featuring a student, a professor, and a chimpanzee.
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