The Bride Test
The Bride Test (The Kiss Quotient, Book 2), by Helen Hoang
Blurb: 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. My ReviewI absolutely LOVED The Kiss Quotient, so of course I had to pre-order this book and practically inhale it as soon as it appeared on my Kindle! Helen Hoang has now, officially been added to my list of favourite authors!A lot happens in this book, more than in The Kiss Quotient, and that was both an upside and a downside. Upside because for the most part it was so well handled that it didn't feel like you were getting bogged down with drama, yet it kept the story moving along and you were really invested in both Esme and Khai's plight. It was a downside however, in the fact that at the end, everything tied up too nicely, with the issue of Esme's daughter, which had been a big concern and secret throughout the book, being revealed to Khai and accepted in a sentence when I felt like there should have been more to it and it would have been nice to have a few scenes of them together... That, however, is the only issue I had with this story. I loved the characters, the writing and I also found it very interesting to compare how Khai's autism differs from Stella's in the first book - many people don't seem to realise that autism isn't just a checklist of things, it's different from person to person and varies in degrees and it was good to see this depicted in an adult book.I can't wait for the next book by this author - I'm desperately hoping for a book for Quan; he deserves his own story, he's such a sweetheart! 
My favourite quotes from 'The Bride Test': 'No one seemed to understand that it wasn't goodbye unless Andy said it back.''I'm not lonely. I like being alone.' 'It looked like they were going to do more of this thing where they both spoke their own languages and neither entirely understood the other,''He had a crying woman latched onto him like an octopus. He couldn't help recalling that the blue-ringed octopus was on go the most venomous animals in existence. Don't upset the octopus.' 'He was puzzle she never would have been able to solve if he hadn't shown her how.'
Blurb: 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. My ReviewI absolutely LOVED The Kiss Quotient, so of course I had to pre-order this book and practically inhale it as soon as it appeared on my Kindle! Helen Hoang has now, officially been added to my list of favourite authors!A lot happens in this book, more than in The Kiss Quotient, and that was both an upside and a downside. Upside because for the most part it was so well handled that it didn't feel like you were getting bogged down with drama, yet it kept the story moving along and you were really invested in both Esme and Khai's plight. It was a downside however, in the fact that at the end, everything tied up too nicely, with the issue of Esme's daughter, which had been a big concern and secret throughout the book, being revealed to Khai and accepted in a sentence when I felt like there should have been more to it and it would have been nice to have a few scenes of them together... That, however, is the only issue I had with this story. I loved the characters, the writing and I also found it very interesting to compare how Khai's autism differs from Stella's in the first book - many people don't seem to realise that autism isn't just a checklist of things, it's different from person to person and varies in degrees and it was good to see this depicted in an adult book.I can't wait for the next book by this author - I'm desperately hoping for a book for Quan; he deserves his own story, he's such a sweetheart! My favourite quotes from 'The Bride Test': 'No one seemed to understand that it wasn't goodbye unless Andy said it back.''I'm not lonely. I like being alone.' 'It looked like they were going to do more of this thing where they both spoke their own languages and neither entirely understood the other,''He had a crying woman latched onto him like an octopus. He couldn't help recalling that the blue-ringed octopus was on go the most venomous animals in existence. Don't upset the octopus.' 'He was puzzle she never would have been able to solve if he hadn't shown her how.'
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