I picked up The Kiss Quotient to fulfill a "book you would normally consider a guilty pleasure" read for this year's Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. I'd heard this one was hot, but I was not prepared for just how steamy this one got!
It's the love story between Stella, an autistic math whiz, and Michael, a part-time male escort. Because Stella's parents are nudging her towards marriage and grandchildren, she believes she needs practice in the dating department. Her previous relationships have not gone well and her self-confidence is low. This leads her to the idea of hiring a male escort to teach her about romance and sex. Since her prior relationships were degrading and one-sided, she figures if she can get a professional to show her the ropes, she'll have a better chance of success.
This Pretty-Woman-in-reverse plot tends to be pretty predictable, but somehow the pleasure of the guilty pleasure is all about Stella. She's just impossible not to like. Yes, she's a bit awkward and insecure, but her straightforward thoughts and actions just mean there's no mistaking what's in her heart. She's always been a workaholic, working with numbers and data, but when her focus turns to Michael, she puts in equal time and effort. The attraction between Stella and Michael is mutual: they fall in love with one another because it's the first relationship for each of them where the other person has cared more about the other than themselves, their focus is on one another's happiness over their own and it's obvious they respect and care deeply for one another. But because Michael has officially been hired by Stella for a limited time, the end of their time together always seems to loom overhead...
Yes, this is a lighthearted quick read, but before you blow this book off as just a piece of fluffy romance, an unexpected takeaway is that this book importantly dispels many misconceptions about autism, specifically related to feelings, love and emotion. Many assumptions that I had prior to reading this book were thoroughly deconstructed. I was interested to find out that while doing research about autism before writing this book, the author discovered she identified with many of the traits she was reading about and was subsequently diagnosed herself with autism. So for this book to be written by an own voices author gave it a completely different level of credibility and insight. The weight of this can't be discounted and if an easy-to-read popular fiction novel can help shed some light on the realities of a sometimes misunderstood group, then I have nothing but positive things to say about it.
Book cover rating: 2/5
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