Saturday 12 January 2019

Review: The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang

It's high time for Stella Lane to settle down and find a husband - or so her mother tells her. This is no easy task for a wealthy, successful woman like Stella, who also happens to have Asperger's. Analyzing data is easy; handling the awkwardness of one-on-one dates is hard. To overcome her lack of dating experience, Stella decides to hire a male escort to teach her how to be a good girlfriend.

Faced with mounting bills, Michael decides to use his good looks and charm to make extra cash on the side. He has a very firm no repeat customer policy, but he's tempted to bend that rule when Stella approaches him with an unconventional proposal.

The more time they spend together, the harder Michael falls for this disarming woman with a beautiful mind, and Stella discovers that love defies logic.

The Kiss Quotient Series:
The Kiss Quotient
The Bride Test
The Heart Principle (2020)

Visit Helen Hoang's website for more information

Review:
Since she turned 30 Stella's mother has started putting on the pressure about her getting married and starting to produce some much longed for grandkids. Stella doesn't want to let her parents down but as someone with Aspergers Syndrome she finds interpersonal relationships extremely difficult and her few attempts at sex have all ended in disaster because she couldn't bear to be touched so intimately by a practical stranger. She's extremely successful at her career but feels like a failure because of her struggles to hold down a relationship so she decides to hire a professional to teach her how to enjoy, or at least tolerate, sex. She's sure that once she's mastered sex she'll have a chance to find a husband and start building a family.

Michael has been an escort for three years, working on the side to earn enough money to cover his mother's medical bills. It wasn't a career path he went looking for and he's become pretty jaded about both women and sex so he finds Stella's openness about her goals incredibly refreshing. Michael is patient, calm and willing to take things very slowly so that Stella is always in control and feeling comfortable with what they're doing. He listens to her fears, goes out of his way to make things easier for her and never makes her feel awkward. In fact, he's the first person who seems to like her for her quirks rather than in spite of them.

I really loved The Kiss Quotient, it's like a gender swapped version of Pretty Woman and the story was both sweet, sexy and incredibly romantic. I loved Stella's personality, she's very intelligent and caring so although she finds it hard to read people she works hard to understand Michael and his family. She's a total novice when it comes to relationships but the way things slowly develop between them was totally believable and I loved how willing they both were to talk things through and discuss their hopes and dreams. Michael has a lot of baggage of his own and doesn't feel worthy of Stella thanks to some things in his past but he was really sweet and protective of her and they just fitted together as a couple so well. I wasn't a big fan of Stella's parents but Michael's mother and sisters more than made up for that and this whole book just left me with a massive smile on my face.

It's not often that I fall so totally in love with a contemporary romance story but The Kiss Quotient was a one sitting read that I absolutely devoured and I'm definitely going to be purchasing everything that Helen Hoang writes in the future.

Source: Received from publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
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