Though Amanda recently read and enjoyed The Kiss Quotient, we welcome this thoughtful and amazing squee from Brooke Winters.

Brooke is an autistic reader, writer and activist who loves romance novels. You can find her on Twitter – @BrookeWinters33.

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As an autistic reader of romance I feel like I’ve been waiting for The Kiss Quotient forever. I love romance novels but until recently I never read one that accurately represented me. The Kiss Quotient has been so hyped up within the autistic community and so highly anticipated that there was a danger that this could never live up to my sky-high expectations, but it exceeded them.

For those who have somehow not yet heard about The Kiss Quotient, it’s a contemporary romance novel written by autistic author Helen Hoang. It’s about an autistic woman called Stella Lane. Stella is a successful and wealthy econometrician. She loves her job and spends most of her time working. The book starts with her mother announcing that she’s ready for grandchildren and suggesting that Stella uses Tinder to find a partner. Stella’s had a lot of bad experiences with men and is convinced that she is the problem (she’s not, she’s just been dating arseholes).

Stella hires escort Michael Phan to teach her about sex and relationships. Michael is half-Vietnamese and half-Swedish. And he was the perfect hero for Stella. He’s hot, talented (and I’m not just talking about sex) kind, and patient with Stella. He has an autistic cousin (who also features in this book) so he has an understanding of autism.

I don’t know how to begin to describe how much I loved this book and how much it meant to see myself reflected in a romance heroine. Autistic people are so often portrayed as unloveable or not worthy of romantic love, so reading a book where the autistic heroine finds complete and unconditional acceptance from the hero was an emotional experience. For me, a happily ever after for an autistic character has to come with acceptance of them as a person and acceptance of their autistic traits, and that’s exactly what I got with this book. There are several times in the book when Stella feels bad about being autistic and at one point she even tries to change herself to act less autistic, but Michael accepts her for who she is and never once wants to change her.

And because it is an “own voices” book, the autistic representation felt so authentic. Helen Hoang weaves in many little details that really helped me to connect with Stella as an autistic woman. For example, Stella often taps and she has a pre-socialization check list that was really similar to my own:

Think before you talk (anything and everything can be an insult to someone; when in doubt, say nothing), be nice, sitting on your hands prevents fidgeting and feels good, make eye contact, smile (no teeth, that’s scary), don’t start thinking about work, don’t let yourself talk about work (no one wants to hear about it), please and thank you, apologize with feeling.

At the beginning of the book Stella’s mum is worried that Stella isn’t developing her social skills any further and that she’s too obsessed with her work. I think this is something that many autistic people can relate to. Even if our special interests make us successful and earn us lots of money there’s still an attitude from many people that special interests are harmful. For autistic people who have special interests that aren’t valued by other people, it’s even worse.

One of my favourite things about this book was Stella’s relationship with her mum. Initially I found Stella’s mother frustrating but as the book progressed it became clear that while in many ways her mum wanted her to be less autistic and to conform to neurotypical standards, she also had so much faith in Stella and ultimately wanted her to be happy. This just seemed so realistic and relatable to me.

As well as being “own voices” for autistic representation, the author, like Michael, is half Vietnamese. I can’t comment on the Vietnamese representation but I enjoyed reading about Michael’s family. They all seemed so well developed and I loved both of his cousins. I desperately wanted to read more about his cousin Khai, who only features briefly in this novel. I can’t wait to read his book.

I think there will be parts of this book that many autistic people will find difficult to read because it’s so realistic. Stella really struggles with a lot of internalised ableism at times during the story and it’s painful to read. For me, this was one of the reasons that this felt like good representation. I want to see my own experiences in books and many of the things that Stella thinks are things that I have thought, but for some autistic readers I can imagine this will be too difficult for them to read. There’s a part in the novel when Stella realises that she isn’t broken and makes a conscious decision not to try to fix herself (you can’t fix what isn’t broken, after all) and this literally had me in tears. It was just such a powerful thing to read.

I thought that the angst was balanced really well with humour. There were times in this novel when I laughed out loud and cried all in the same chapter. Often autistic characters are used for comedy in a laughing at them kind of way but in The Kiss Quotient I always felt like I was laughing with Stella.

As a romance this worked well. There’s so much heat between Stella and Michael and I could really feel the connection. I liked the emphasis on consent and respect for boundaries. I loved how supportive Michael was of Stella’s career. In so many romance novels the hero is a billionaire while the heroine is struggling financially and I really liked that this was reversed in this novel. Stella isn’t quite a billionaire but she’s a strong, successful woman and she doesn’t need a man to take care of her. To quote Stella’s mum, “she’s driven enough on her own, and she doesn’t need someone to take care of her financially.”

For me the theme that ran through this book was acceptance. Stella’s mum struggles at times to understand Stella and accept her daughter exactly how she is but still supports and loves her. Michael’s acceptance of Stella is unconditional: her being autistic isn’t an issue for him. And Stella’s acceptance of herself is a journey that I think many of us have been through. Ultimately, she comes to realise that she is exactly who she is meant to be:

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.