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The Kiss Quotient
RECOMMENDED: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang is $2.99! I’m jealous of those who get to read this for the first time. We had a wonderful guest squee of this and it was my favorite read of 2018:
I truly loved this book. Loved. It made me feel like a champagne bubble – all fizzy and light. When I think of all the magical feelings romance gives its readers, I will forever think of this book.
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…
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Ayesha at Last
RECOMMENDED: Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin is $2.99! Carrie, who will read any and all Pride and Prejudice retellings, gave this one a B+:
Now THIS is how it’s done! Ayesha At Last is a lovely loose retelling of Pride and Prejudice, with a perfect mix of humor, heartbreak, misunderstandings, and humor. It’s a contemporary set in Canada and the characters are described with empathy and with plenty of surprises.
A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love.
Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. She lives with her boisterous Muslim family and is always being reminded that her flighty younger cousin, Hafsa, is close to rejecting her one hundredth marriage proposal. Though Ayesha is lonely, she doesn’t want an arranged marriage. Then she meets Khalid who is just as smart and handsome as he is conservative and judgmental. She is irritatingly attracted to someone who looks down on her choices and dresses like he belongs in the seventh century.
When a surprise engagement is announced between Khalid and Hafsa, Ayesha is torn between how she feels about the straightforward Khalid and the unsettling new gossip she hears about his family. Looking into the rumors, she finds she has to deal with not only what she discovers about Khalid, but also the truth she realizes about herself.
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A Desperate Fortune
A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley is $2.99! This is part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals. Like Kearsley’s other books, it has strong romantic elements and dual timelines. Many readers loved Sara, a woman who’s been diagnosed with Asperger’s and takes a job as a codebreaker, but other readers found the book took a while to get going. Are you a Kearsley fan?
The highly anticipated, brand-new timeslip romance from New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley
For nearly 300 years, the mysterious journal of Jacobite exile Mary Dundas has lain unread-its secrets safe from prying eyes. Now, amateur codebreaker Sara Thomas has been hired by a once-famous historian to crack the journal’s cipher.
But when she arrives in Paris, Sara finds herself besieged by complications from all sides: the journal’s reclusive owner, her charming Parisian neighbor, and Mary, whose journal doesn’t hold the secrets Sara expects. As Mary’s tale grows more and more dire, Sara, too, must carefully choose which turning to take… to find the road that will lead her safely home.
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Faker
Faker by Sarah Smith is $2.99! I love an enemies to lovers romance, so I was interested in this when it came out. I’m going to namedrop BookThingo again (seriously, give her a follow), because her live tweet of this book was really illuminating. However, your mileage may vary.
Debut author Sarah Smith nails this fun and sexy rom-com where two office foes hammer out their differences to build a love that will last….
Emmie Echavarre is a professional faker. She has to be to survive as one of the few female employees at Nuts & Bolts, a power tool company staffed predominantly by gruff, burly men. From nine to five, Monday through Friday, she’s tough as nails–the complete opposite of her easy-going real self.
One thing she doesn’t have to fake? Her disdain for coworker Tate Rasmussen. Tate has been hostile to her since the day they met. Emmie’s friendly greetings and repeated attempts to get to know him failed to garner anything more than scowls and terse one-word answers. Too bad she can’t stop staring at his Thor-like biceps…
When Emmie and Tate are forced to work together on a charity construction project, things get…heated. Emmie’s beginning to see that beneath Tate’s chiseled exterior lies a soft heart, but it will take more than a few kind words to erase the past and convince her that what they have is real.
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I know basically everyone loves Kiss Quotient, but I found it to be really problematic. The heroine’s arc is propelled by her expressing boundaries/needs/wants, at which point the hero says “no, I know better,” and keeps going. The fact that her character ends up being glad he ignored her doesn’t erase the fact that the entire book is based in a woman becoming okay with a shocking lack of consent in her relationship. I am troubled that (appropriate) excitement that a book contains a non-neurotypical protagonist somehow has blinded readers to a dynamic that they’d call out in a “regular” romance. No should mean no for everyone.
I agree with Kate… Kiss Quotient didn’t do it for me, then I read the second one for some reason and I didn’t like it any better.
I found both books had a little too much possessiveness in them for me, along with the problem that Kate points out above.
I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by The Kiss Quotient. I don’t now remember all the issues I had, but a big one was there was too much sex. Yes, I know I sound like one of those people, but I felt as if the sex scenes came at the expense of other kinds of intimacy between the MCs. There were some really great scenes with Michael’s family that helped a bit, but I was never really sold on a lasting connection between the two.
Part of this may be due to my own personal issues since I seem to struggle more with contemporary romances than historical ones, as a general rule. I think I’m more likely to give historicals a pass over things that hang me up with contemporaries. Also, as much as I love audiobooks, I think I prefer to actually read romances than listen to them. The narration was good (I gave it an A), but the story hovered around C+ territory for me.
I could not handle Faker. The first 1/4-1/3 was basically a scene-for-scene Hating Game replay, and the heroine spent an exhausting amount of time swooning over the hero’s perfect white skin. Gag. I checked out of it about halfway through because I could not take it.
Thanks for the heads up on Faker. I love enemies to lovers, but so many of them miss the mark.
I can’t understand all the love for Ayesha at Last. I hated it and DNF’s after about 50 pages. The hero was so dull and way too timid for a “Darcy.” For a much better Muslim P&P, check out Unmarriagable.
My 2 cents- I loved the Kiss Quotient for its mixed race protagonists, sex positive outlook, and nuanced portrayal of one sort of non neuro typical high functioning person. I also loved the subversive treatment of the whole sex worker with a heart of gold trope. For me, the issues around consent and boundary were handled well and both characters grew as the story unfolded. YMMV of course!
I tried really hard with Ayesha, At Last because I love the premise, but I just really wanted a dude with more spark for her. I mean, Darcy was a bit of a ponce but his barbs were witty and funny. I haven’t managed to finish the book and I imagine it will be due back before I do and vanish from my kindle.
I could not handle the on and on about white dude and his beautiful whiteness in Faker. It was painful to read and I gave up trying.
Just a note about functioning labels for neurodivergent people: a lot of autistic people find labels like “high functioning/low functioning” and “severe/mild” autism vague and unhelpful, even ableist at times. It also doesn’t capture the variability from one neurodivergent person to the next, or even within one person from day to day or from moment to moment. (I think a lot of people would say I am “mildly” autistic, but it feels pretty “severe” when I’m close to a meltdown or in a shutdown!)
Please, describe specific behaviors, impairments, or needs – e.g. “uses self-harming stims,” “nonverbal autistic,” “has low/high support needs.” Thank you!
Oh, I liked all of these!
I totally agree with Kate wrt Kiss quotient. I DNF it for the exact reasons she enumerates.
Unmarriageble by Soniah Kamal, recommended by Lola (above), is $1.99 on kindle now.
I loved Ayesha at Last.
Another recent Pride and Prejudice homage with a South Asian connection is Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Somali Dev. The central family in her new series is Indian-American, and the Darcy character is a woman. I loved this gender swap, especially because I find domineering male heroes off-putting.
I also liked the voice of the heroine in Courting Samira by Amal Awad, though I thought the romance was less convincing.