September 6, 2018 | No Comments
The Kiss Quotient
by Helen Hoang
Date Published: May 30, 2018
Published By: Berkley
Page Count: 323
Publisher’s Description:
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 to crave all the other things he’s making her feel. Soon, 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…
My Star Rating:
My Review:
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have to admit, I started reading this book after seeing an excerpt in some article somewhere, and I wondered if this book would really live up to its hype.
Mystery solved… it does!
From the well-beyond-ordinary characters that I completely fell in love with, to the slow-burn romance, to the steaming hot love scenes between these diverse, unconventional people, Hoang has definitely turned me into a fan.
Stella has a Ph.D. in Econometrics. She’s brilliantly smart, hardworking, and there’s nothing more she likes more than her work… so much so that she works even on her days off. As such, her parents are filthy rich, and she herself, even outside of her family money, has more money than the poor girl knows what to do with. She’s also on the Autism Spectrum.
As a super-introvert myself, I have to say I can 100% relate to this part of the story, but Stella at some point realizes she must turn the act of learning how to be good in social settings into a task to master, including how to successfully be in a romantic relationship with a man. These things do not come naturally to her, so the best way she can come up with the master such a thing is to hire someone to teach her.
Introduce Michael. Michael is a Vietnamese man a few years younger than Stella, described to be very handsome and often said to look like two different movie stars. Michael is such an endearing character on so many levels. So what if he makes money on the weekends as a Male Escort? He has his reasons… and it’s lucky he did when you think about it, because otherwise, he may have never met poor Stella.
When these two get together, sparks fly, and the push and pull of will-they-won’t-they is just enough to keep you wildly flipping the pages to get to the “they will!” parts. The way he takes her and puts her at ease, making her feel comfortable in her own skin, making her see how a man should treat her and making her see that what she wants is just as important as what her partner wants, and making her see that she’s perfect just the way she is, labels be damned.
This book will challenge you, and it will break your heart, and it will restore your faith in humanity once again when all is said and done. If you add one Must-Read book to your TBR this year, I’d say this one should be it.