Fridays I’m In Love: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

Welcome to Fridays I’m In Love, our new meme for romance reviews! Today, I am sharing my thoughts on The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. With this Tuesday’s release of The Bride Test, book 2 in The Kiss Quotient series, I decided I should finally read the book that everyone talks about!

Most of the Fridays I’m In Love reviews will be adult romance books and of course we will be sharing them on Fridays. We hope you’re enjoying the posts when we branch out from our norm of all YA books all the time.

The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient, #1)

by Helen Hoang
Published by: Berkley
on June 5, 2018
Genres: Adult, Contemporary Romance, Mature
Pages: 317
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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...

Review

The Kiss Quotient lives up to the hype and is an outstanding romance book! For all the talk about it, I didn’t know it was as steamy as it was! Whew HOTT! I absolutely loved the neurodiversity and more specifically the portrayal of autism in this own voices book.

I was absolutely in love with how Helen Hoang took her own experiences and explored the world of romance through her character Stella. The eschewing of autism as a disease or a disorder, or something to be pitied or fixed, and more of just a way of life to be valued and accepted. Because Stella is autistic she excels at her economics career, but has shortcomings in social settings. Especially in the romance department.

Stella decides she needs practice to get comfortable enough so she can do better with dating and touching, so she contacts an escort service. Michael is hot, sweet, and charming. He works hard, has his own personal struggles, and put his life on the back burner to help care for his mother who is battling cancer. When the medical bills started piling up, he figured why not get paid for what he knows he’s good at.

The hardest part of the book, which let’s be fair, seems to be in all romance books, was the lack of communication. So much drama would have been avoided if they just talked to each other instead of making assumptions about how they both are feeling or what their needs were. Of course, being an Aspie, I understood this from Stella, but from Michael, well had his own hangups over his past that caused his insecurities over his feelings.

You definitely root for these characters, and they are so relatable. I was cheering for them the whole time. I highly recommend the audiobook, because the narrators gave so much emotion and different tones for all the characters, and I loved listening to her. For a debut, I think this book was perfect, and I am looking forward to more from Helen & this series. If you want a sweet, sexy, and quick romance read, definitely add The Kiss Quotient to your TBR!