A Fan's Playground

I mentioned in my last review of a Hibbert romance novel that she tends to write too many grumpy heroines for my taste, and although that's true, I think my actual issue is that nearly all of her heroines are......extremely willing to be in-your-face rude. This often goes along with grumpiness, but not always! Eve Brown, the titular heroine of this book, is not grumpy, but she is still a little too comfortable being rude as a way of showing confidence.

And this is just not a character feature I'm personally into! I like a lot of the other aspects of what Hibbert does with her books, but....I am getting real tired of this being a feature of almost every book.

(the other feature I'm getting tired of is all the sexual attraction, but like, it's a romance novel, what else do I expect :P)

Anyway I liked this book more than the other two in the Brown sisters trilogy, but.....still not exactly for me.

Will I keep trying out books by Talia Hibbert? Almost certainly! Will I also continue to temper my expectations around whether I'll love her books? Also that, yes.

Trying something new here, and writing a book review by comparing two books to each other, instead of giving each their own space!

So I read two romance novels recently with #ownvoices autistic representation, which is excellent! And now I want to talk about them in relation to each other, because I ended up liking one of them far more than the other.

A Girl Like Her by Talia Hibbert I read last month, and I don't really remember all the details anymore but it was super great. I liked how unapologetic it was (and Ruth was!) about Ruth's autism. Being autistic informs Ruth's life and choices, but it's never presented as bad or a problem to be overcome. The relationship between Ruth and Evan was lovely, and it was very affirming for me to read a book like this about a neurodivergent person being deserving of love just as she is. I had a lot of feelings about that which I had trouble putting into words at the time (and still do) but: yes good.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, on the other hand, I just finished and although there were some things I really liked....I had some arguments with aspects of it. Here's my issues.

1. This is just a me thing I know, but it is a book with a LOTTTTTTT of focus on sex. That's just not one of the things that draws me to read in the romance genre, so it was tedious being like, I wanna just skip past all the endless sex but there's important character moments sprinkled into the sex sometimes so I can't.

2. It felt to me like the male lead, Michael, was bulldozing past Stella's stated boundaries way too often. And this was portrayed as positive persistence in getting past her barriers, instead of boundary-crossing and bad. And yes, he always turned out to be correct in reading what she actually wanted vs the no she was saying, but that doesn't stop his behaviour from being inappropriate, and it eventually started to make me really uncomfortable.

3. Philip....OH BOY. Philip sexually harasses Stella multiple times, but this is presented more as a thing around Michael's jealousy, or around Philip being a bad match for Stella, and less that he is a SEXUAL HARASSER WHICH IS A BAD THING TO BE AND AUTOMATICALLY TAKES YOU OUT OF THE RUNNING AS A POTENTIAL PARTNER. Ughhhhhh.

Compare points 2 & 3 above to A Girl Like Her, which was consciously careful about consent, and which explicitly dealt with the fact that one of the leads had previously been in an abusive relationship and that it was fucked up.

I liked Stella, and I liked that over the course of the The Kiss Quotient she learns to be more accepting of her autistic traits, and that it doesn't mean there's something wrong with her, while not dismissing the real challenges she experiences in an allistic society. But did she have to learn it with a boundary-crosser like Michael??

The two books feature women at very different stages in their path of understanding and accepting being autistic, and both are great and have value in being represented! But as a romance novel, A Girl Like Her worked wayyyyyyyyyyy better for me than The Kiss Quotient.

A second-chance romance novella about a pregnant woman fleeing an abusive marriage, and the guy she knew for 6 weeks when they were teens who was her first love.

It's lovely! I love how supportive Samir is of Laura in this difficult time in her life, and how Laura re-learns how to feel strong and capable and worthy of attention once she's outside of Daniel's sphere of influence.

I don't have a lot to say about this one, but it's real nice. I liked it a lot.

(and if you want a low-commitment way to try Hibbert's writing out, you can get a copy of this one for free if you sign up for her newsletter on her website!)