The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

6/10/2019

SYNOPSIS

Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently.

When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.

As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs.

Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection.

With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love.

Synopsis from Goodreads

PERSONAL REVIEW

After reading The Kiss Quotient, I was excited to jump into another Helen Hoang romance. Stella and Michael has stolen my heart and I was ready for the same thing to happen in The Bride Test. This book has been around a lot on Instragram lately so I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and dive in.

Cute Love Story
This is a very sweet love story about two people trying to figure out if they can actually be together, while dealing with a lot of barriers along the way. Khai is such a sweetheart and I was rooting for him to be able to look past his history and accept that he deserves love. While Esme (My) is lovely, it's Khai that stole the show for me. That said, Esme's story is equally special as she tries to find her place in a completely new world. She's entirely out of her element and struggling to figure out how to build a life for herself and her family. Her storyline is the story of so many new immigrants who do whatever they can to make a new life for themselves, and I really appreciated that we got to see this side of the story.

Why Doesn't Esme Look Up "Autism"?
One of the things about Autism is that is a spectrum, which means someone can fall anywhere within a wide range of complex concerns. So it was a bit annoying that My hears twice that Khai is autistic and never bothers to figure out what this actually means. For someone who loves to study, it didn’t track with me that she wouldn’t do some research on this word. And many of the awkward interactions between them would have been discussed openly if she had! So I get that as a plot device, it makes sense for her not to look it up, but it didn’t make sense for her character and it was annoying when she kept misinterpreting what was going on with Khai.

Quan and Michael are Too Bro-y
This wasn’t a massive part of the book, but I did find the Quan and Michael teaching Khai about sex chapter super frustrating. Michael, a lovely guy in The Kiss Quotient, becomes completely useless in this book, and Quan, the cool cousin and older brother, comes off as such a douchebag! One: if you knew your brother was a virgin, why have you not talked about this before? And two: what is up with the patronizing “women need cuddling after sex because they’re emotional” crap? I know this is supposed to be a funny conversation between brothers, but everything out of Quan’s mouth in that moment really annoyed me.

Overall, this was still a fun romance novel, but it didn't live up to the The Kiss Quotient for me. I didn't completely buy some of the "problems" and some of the characters (ahem, QUAN!) just annoyed me, BUT I still enjoyed the premise and getting to read Khai and My's story. This is a high summer romance recommendation for me!

FINAL RATING: 3/5