Helen Hoang, author of The Kiss Quotient (2018), writes, “As I pursued and eventually attained a diagnosis [of Asperger’s Syndrome] (at the age of thirty-four), Stella, my autistic heroine, was born on the page. It has never been so easy for me to write a character. I knew her intimately. She came from my heart. I didn’t have to filter my thoughts to make her socially acceptable, something I’d been unconsciously doing for ages.” (p. 317)
Helen started reading romance novels when she was eight years old. She found them calming and relaxing. Years later, Helen wondered why none of the women in the romance novels she read were autistic. So, she wrote The Kiss Quotient where her heroine, Stella Lane, a brilliant econometrician who analyzes huge data sets decides to explore love. Stella struggles with social interactions and prefers just to concentrate on her work. But, Stella’s mother pressures her to start dating, an activity Stella dreads. Stella is convinced her problems with men center around her belief that she’s bad at sex. So Stella decides to hire a guy from an escort service to “teach” her how to be good at sex. I especially enjoyed Stellas “Lesson Plan” for her sex session.
Yes, there are some reverse Pretty Woman plot twists in The Kiss Quotient. I don’t usually read romance novels, but the premises of this one are creative and novel with the genre constraints. I found The Kiss Quotient to be a fun read. GRADE: B+
Sounds like a perfect book for Cap’n Bob!
Just kidding.
Jeff, I found THE KISS QUOTIENT an eye-opener.
Reminds me of THE ROSIE PROJECT of a few years ago.
Patti, capturing the thought-process of an autistic woman convincingly is quite a balancing act.
I think I’ll pass on this one. Looks too dark for me.
Steve, there’s a surprising amount of sex in THE KISS QUOTIENT.
George—you obviously don’t read many romance novels if you found the amount of sex in THE KISS QUOTIENT “surprising”!
I read quite a lot of romance and visit a number of romance blogs and they’ve been all over this book for a while. However, my daughter—who has Asperger’s, although now the medical diagnosis is actually “high-functioning autism spectrum disorder”—bemoans the “magical aspie” character in popular culture—you know, characters who don’t understand social cues but can calculate pi in their heads to 150 positions or can tell what disease someone has by looking at their knuckles. I’m hoping that, because she is HFASD herself, Hoang hasn’t made that mistake.
Deb, you’re right about my naiveté about Romance Novels and their sexual content. The last Romance Novel I read before THE KISS QUOTIENT was a Harlequin paperback back in the 1970s! I thought Helen Hoang showed the deliberate thought process someone with Asperger’s goes through in a social interaction convincingly.
Pfui
Rick, variety is the spice of Life.
I remember when you used to read mystery fiction. I guess those were the good old days.
Rick, I have a classic mystery scheduled for tomorrow and a private eye novel scheduled for FFB. And a book about the Pulps on Sunday.