I don't read a lot of contemporary non-erotica romances, so The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang, was a bit out of the ordinary for me. It did not start well. The second paragraph contained a sentence that just annoyed me: "Stella Lane's gaze jumped from her breakfast up to her mother's gracefully aging face." It sounds as if her mother's face is morphing before her eyes.
And then, after a description of the mother's makeup, the narration jumps to a complete non-sequitur. The makeup "boded ill for Stella. When her mother got something into her mind, she was like a honey badger with a vendetta."
I'm happy to say that that was the worst paragraph in the book, which turned out to be delightful. Hoang is apparently on the autism spectrum, and so is Stella. While Stella's character is informed by autism, she is not defined by it. She has skills that would be rare in a neurotypical character -- an uncanny ability to focus, for example, which has made her wildly successful in her career creating algorithms for online shopping. She has also learned to hide some of her differences -- memorizing social skills, and avoiding noisy places.
But she's lonely. When a co-worker taunts her that she'll never have a romantic relationship if she doesn't learn to be good in bed, she turns her prodigious focus to gaining those skills. She hires a sex worker to teach her. That's Michael, and he is a significantly less interesting character than Stella. Their love story hits all the beats. It's fine. Michael's hot, and he thinks Stella's hot, and they're compatible, and he punches a guy for her.
But I honestly don't care about the love story. I only care about Stella. I would read about her in any genre. She could be captain of a starship, or solving mysteries (okay, actually I don't read mysteries), or in the middle of a multi-generational saga where she discovers her roots. It doesn't matter. She's awesome. I want more Stella.
