From the author of The Bride Test comes a romance novel hailed as one of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2018 and one of Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2018!“This is such a fun read and it’s also quite original and sexy and sensitive.”—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author “Hoang’s writing bursts from the page.”—BuzzfeedA heartwarming and refreshing debut novel that proves … page.”—Buzzfeed
A heartwarming and refreshing debut novel that proves one thing: there’s not enough data in the world to predict what will make your heart tick.
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
It doesn’t help that Stella has Asperger’s and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay to more-than-missionary position…
Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but crave all of the other things he’s making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic…
more
I loved Stella & Michael’s stories. I found them vulnerable, interesting, and they had amazing chemistry. I just devoured this one!
Quirky and delightful!
It wasn’t long before I thought “Oh boy, this is very steamy!” I wasn’t expecting it but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt wrapped up in the characters and had a hard time putting this book down!
one of my favorite reads this year.
Loved every page of this book.
“She had a disorder, but it didn’t define her.”
Adorable love story full of quirky and lovable characters.
I think this is more on the flick-read side, but it was still enjoyable.
I couldn’t put this book down, I just loved it!
Finally dove into this romantic read. It was refreshing, fun, and totally sexy, with captivating and adorably flawed characters. Loved this story.
I loved this book.
Once again, Helen Hoang wrote a brilliant romance with an autistic MC that felt real to me–as an autistic woman.
Brilliantly done.
Also, a fun and interesting take on a romance trope that I usually don’t enjoy.
Two thumbs up for the well written autistic rep in the romance world.
I have really enjoyed the books I have read by this author. She writes about a different perspective of modern romance. Funny, yet real. her characters show their flaws, which become assests.
I listened to The Kiss Quotient as an audiobook, after seeing the emphatic BB recommendation from Erica Ridley. I absolutely loved & savored every moment. It was so much fun, yet also heartwarming & very steamy/stirring! Now I am listening to The Bride Test and enjoying it as well. (Fabulous narrator is another big plus!)
There’s so much to love about this book. It’s so genuine and warm. A really enjoyable read.
Narrator: The narration on this book was done very well. I enjoyed how she did every character in the book. I had no issues and I highly recommend the audiobook.
Story: This was a really cute story for having a male escort as the hero. The only thing I can complain about this story was Michael’s penchant for not thinking he was good enough. I just don’t enjoy when a character pushes away for those reasons. Despite that, it was a pretty enjoyable read. I really like how Michael treated Stella, who has Aspergers. He was so kind and patient with her and you could tell he genuinely loved her for who she was. I also enjoyed that his family full of women were in this quite a bit.
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
i saw this on ig as well (maybe i need to just gtfo ig and their book recs) i checked it out and its aight.
Stella has asperger’s and so she hires Michael to teach here to have sex. but of course Michael is fire as fuck!!!! so she falls in love and so does he and they do it (or try) and they decide instead of sex, they’ll practice her dating, so they do and she meets the fam and so does he and they belong together but of course it wouldn’t be a book if they weren’t stupid about it and they end up together and yay.
i will say that I LOVE that in this story Stella makes bank AF and Michael is destined to be a designer. finally a role reversal. (also, Michael has more depth to him but like…..ya know.) either way. good read but i could have done without it and I’m bummed that its a series because as much as i want to not read it, i will.
Audiobook: Narrator – Carly Robins
This was a very nice narration. Both the male and female characters were defined and I never cringed as she performed the male point of view. Ms. Robins pulled me in with her smooth voice and perfect intonation. Very pleasurable listen.
This was a fun, quirky, sometimes angsty, and often insightful read/listen. The heroine has Asperger’s and feels left out when it comes to dating and relationships in general. Enter Michael, a male escort. The evolution of both Stella and Michael as individuals as well as a couple kept me totally engaged. This story isn’t drama filled but emotionally rich. With so many moments that highlighted their differences and the way they dealt with them was what won me over with this book. I loved Stella. I loved Michael. And I especially loved them together.
This felt like a really fast audio until I realized I was listening to it when I usually have my audiobook turned off. I just wanted to stay in the moment with these characters. There are some fun secondary characters that added to my enjoyment as well. I’d actually love to have more of Michael’s family and friends.
Stella has a gift for numbers and does a fantastic job as an econometrician, predicting sales based on collected data of consumers, but she’s constantly turning down promotions. Why? Because they want to give her direct reports, and Stella doesn’t deal well with people. That goes double for her personal life. She’s tried dating, but can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, and frankly, she finds kissing and sex distasteful. Ugh, some guy putting his tongue in her mouth? No, thank you. She has a sensitivity to smells and touch and taste, and the men she’s dated don’t make any allowances for that. But that’s probably her fault too because she won’t tell them why she’s struggling. Because she doesn’t want their pity. When people find out she’s autistic, they treat her differently, and she just wants to be normal. Or does she? Her mother has made her promise she’ll try on the personal relationship front, so Stella can’t give up even if she wants to.
After a ‘ex’ tells Stella she needs more practice in bed (!), Stella hires Michael, an escort, and asks him to teach her about sex so she can get better at it and therefore be more successful in the dating arena. After a couple of false starts, a failed date and a spectacularly atrocious family dinner, Michael puts two and two together. Once he understands what Stella needs and why, it’s much easier to work with her on the skills she wants to improve. But the more he learns about her, the more he realises it’s going to be hard to walk away from her.
There was only one thing I didn’t like about this story. Stella doesn’t tell Michael she’s autistic because she’s worried that it will change how he views her. He figures it out, it doesn’t change how he feels about her (if anything, he feels more strongly for her), and yet because they don’t communicate on the subject for ages, it remains an issue preventing them from being together. Similarly, Michael doesn’t tell Stella what forced him into the escort business because he’s worried it will change how she views her. She figures it out, it doesn’t change how she feels about him (if anything, she feels more strongly for him) and yet because they don’t communicate on the subject for ages, it remains an issue preventing them from being together. Ugh. I hated that. But it was still a solid four star read, and I really enjoyed it, so don’t let that stop you.
I thought Stella was really well written, and she felt natural. Sometimes with characters who have ‘labels’ such as autism, it feels like the author gives them characteristics, habits or issues just to make them more stereotypical of whatever they’ve been labelled with. Stella didn’t feel like that. She felt more natural. And she wasn’t ‘cured’ by Michael. That was made evident in a few ways, including when Philip kissed her and when she was wearing the top with the open seams when talking to Janie. Interestingly, after I finished reading the book, I found out the author is also on the autism spectrum, and wrote a lot of herself into Stella.
If you enjoy contemporary romance novels, I think you’ll enjoy this one. It’s not gritty per se, nor is it clean and sweet, but it feels real.
An autistic heroine makes this book unique. Then there’s the hero who looks like he’s straight out of Crazy Rich Asians. Make the hottie an escort and have our socially challenged girl hire him to teach her about sex and I was hooked. This unusual and original story was wonderful. Don’t miss it.
I love this book!!!! The characters are so richly written. They are realistic and flawed and you root for them from the first page to the last page.
I kept this on my TBR for a while until the moment I was in the mood for it. And it did not disappoint; I love this book.
Stella is a lovely woman with asperger’s who wants to pursue a relationship but is afraid she needs to ‘learn sex’. So she finds an escort – Michael – who is very sweet and understanding right away and they actually don’t have sex. Michael has his reasons to be an escort on Friday night’s and even when you could argue he could have solved his financial issues differently I somehow did not care about that and could understand why. He also gave up his dreams to be a designer.
When Stella realizes it is not sex she needs to know more about, but about how to be in a relationship with someone, she hires Michael for a month to be her fake boyfriend so she can practice. Michael is actually quite taken in by Stella and decides to help her – even when he does not intend to take her money!
Their time together is so sweet and quite hot. I read in other reviews that Stella’s asperger’s was magically healed, but that is NOT the case. Stella even acknowledges that she should not try to change herself; she is like she is and Michael loves her for who she is.
Quote: This crusade to fix herself was ending right now. She wasn’t broken. She saw and interacted with the world in a different way, but that was her. She could change her actions, change her words, change her appearance, but she couldn’t change the root of herself. At her core, she would always be autistic. People called it a disorder, but it didn’t feel like one. To her, it was simply the way she was.
For me this was a great book. I thought Michael was a swoony hero, even when he is not the standard alpha. He loves designing clothes, he is good to his mom and family. And – most important – he is wonderful and sweet with Stella. Loved the epilogue. (2018)