The Kiss Quotient

I had high hopes for this book going into it since I’d seen many, many reviews and hype for this book…and it didn’t disappoint!

This contemporary love story is about Stella, a thirty-year-old  with Asperger’s.  Her ability to be singularly focused, scheduled, and driven is wonderful at her job in econometrics (predicting buying trends by using data and coding) but not so great when trying to find a compatible boyfriend.  With her mother’s bluntness about wanting her to get married soon and her empty social calendar, she decides she needs some help.  So she did what any girl would do:  hire a male escort to teach her how to improve her romantic life.  She finds Michael (who has emotional baggage of his own), proposes a deal to meet up weekly to work out her romantic deficiencies, and soon finds herself invested in her fake relationship more than she ever thought she could be.

I guess what I really loved about this novel was the fact that she acknowledges her quirkiness but it’s not her only defining trait.  She’s still kind and trusting and inquisitive and just like most women who want to find someone to connect with.  It shows that everyone feels self-conscious about some part of themselves, even people who seem perfect from the outside like Michael.  I also liked how the point of view changes in each chapter between her and Michael.  It makes it feel like a fuller story knowing that her infatuation turned love isn’t just a one-sided affair.

Disclaimer:  This is an adult novel.  An adult romance novel.  With sex (regular and consensual, but still a little graphic in nature).  I mean, the whole premise of the novel is her trying to hook up with a male prostitute, so you’re not going into this one with false pretenses.

The Matchmaker's List

I’d seen this book all around, and with part of my new year’s reading resolution being to read more diverse books, I thought this would fit right into my February rom-com reads.  However, it fell a little flat for me.

Raina is almost thirty, her best friend is engaged, and she’s still secretly pining for her ex-boyfriend who’s been out of her life for years.  She reluctantly agrees to let her Indian grandma play matchmaker.  Hence, the matchmaker’s list of pre-approved eligible bachelors.  As Raina goes on one bad date after another, she finds out that her ex is moving back to town, her best friend is trying to push a groomsman at her, and Raina is at her wits end.  Even in Canada, her Indian culture of marrying to find fulfillment rubs her the wrong way, but how do you tell the ones who love you the most that they’re making you miserable?

I guess with the name like the Matchmaker’s List, I thought most of the story would be Raina going through her grandmother’s list, when in actuality that lasts the first fifty or so pages.  After that, it starts to get a little off track…like her grandmother signing her up for an IndianSingles.com profile without telling her or her not correcting her grandmother when she asks if she’s a lesbian (which leads to another whole drama in itself).  By the end, it does all come back together in a very predictable “I know that was going to happen” way, but some of the choices in the middle seemed a little off from the original story premise.

I did enjoy learning about another culture and their expectations around marriage.  I also liked how the problems Raina created in the story forced her traditional, close-knit community to shed some of its biased nature.  There were redeemable qualities about the book, however, it wasn’t a must-read, in my opinion.

Comics Will Break Your Heart

When I saw this advanced reader’s copy on Net Galley, I knew I had to snag it!  I was already familiar with the author, Faith Erin Hicks, through some of her graphic novels, Friends With Boys and Brain Camp.  Even though this one was not a graphic novel, I was excited to see her take on a modern-day Romeo & Juliet story revolving around…comic books.

Miriam lives in the small Canadian town of Sandford, a place that feels small yet familiar to Miriam.  She dreams of leaving to go off to college but is afraid because all her friends will be staying behind.  On top of her college worries, her best friend Raleigh is becoming more distant the more she spends with her hard-edged boyfriend.  One comfort is working at the Emporium of Wonders, a book and comics shop.  Not only can she save money for college, but she can also feel connected to her grandfather, the illustrator of the original TomorrowMen comic books who signed away his half of the TomorrowMen fortune to his business partner.

Weldon is new to Sandford and is living with his aunt and uncle for the summer because of his poor decisions that keep getting him suspended from school.  His father, the owner of the TomorrowMen comic characters, is also busy overseeing the new TomorrowMen action movie and has no time to control his out-of-control son.  Weldon, bored, finds the Emporium of Wonders and by chance meets Miriam.  His interest is peaked, however, once hearing his name Miriam visibly goes cold towards him.  Time and time again, the two find themselves thrown together, but can they get over generations of hostilities between the two families?

I loved just about everything about this YA novel.  Miriam’s uncertainty about leaving her hometown, family, and friends to pursue her college dreams and her troubles navigating her changing friendships.  Weldon’s complicated family relationships (divorced parents who both won’t take him in for the summer or find the time to stop his rebellious antics) and his public facade that many people can’t—or are unwilling—to see through.  They all felt very real and applicable to students today.  Then there’s the who idea of putting aside prejudices against people just because of who their family is.

Yes, it’s Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers, but it also has heart and strength and vulnerability.

Unmarriageable

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

This famous first line by Jane Austen is the launching point for Sonia Kamal’s novel, Unmarriageable, a Pride and Prejudice retelling in Pakistan.  In a modern-day 2000’s culture, many Pakistani girls marry young or find love through family connections and arranged marriages.  This is no different for the five Binat daughters.  Jena and Alys, the oldest two daughters, are in their early thirties and seen as closing in on their marriage expiration dates, until the day the Binat family receives a coveted invitation to a blow-out wedding in their small Pakistani town.  Mrs. Binat believes this is a gift to launch her daughters into the arms of eligible bachelors.  Enter Fahad “Bungles” Bingla and his best friend Valentine Darsee.  As Bungles falls head over heels for Jena, Valentine’s stand-offish manner rubs Alys the wrong way, but she finds herself thrown into situations with him again and again.  With Bungles’ interfering sisters—Hammy and Sammy—and Valentine’s disapproval, Alys can see that Jena has a hard road to climb if she wants to keep her demur reputation.

This book is very much in the same vein as the original—the conniving mother, the love-at-first-sight, the misinterpretations, the family dynamics—just set in Pakistani culture.  Having never been to Pakistan and not read much literature from there, it was nice to read it from a Pakistani author’s perspective.  She did a wonderful job showing how themes bridge cultures and how classics can be reimagined with the same essence as the original.  Kamal says it best in her acknowledgements at the end:

“In reading literature through a Pakistani lens, it seemed to me that all cultures were concerned with the same eternal questions and that people were more similar to one another than they were different.  As Alys Binat says in Unmarriageable, ‘Reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.’”

The Princess and the Fangirl

I love a good fairy tale reimagining, so when I saw Ashley Poston’s follow-up novel to her debut Geekarella, I knew I had to read it.

Geekarella revolves around ExcelsiCon, a comic-con convention in Atlanta whose big lure is the sci-fi franchise Starfield.  It’s your basic Cinderella retelling:  girl wants to go to comic-con, step-mother forbids it, a friend with a food truck (aptly named The Magic Pumpkin) helps get her there, meets famous actor who also turns out to be a Starfield fan, they fall in love, the end.

This book takes place a year later at the next ExcelsiCon where the reboot movie Starfield has just crushed the box office and the actors are coming back to announce a movie sequel.  However, Jessica, the main actress in the movie, isn’t thrilled.  She’s been lampooned online for her portrayal of her character and desperately wants out of her contract.  By chance, she meets Imogen, a Starfield superfan who has an uncanny resemblance to Jessica.  They decide to change places (in the style of the Prince and the Pauper…hence the title).  Now Jessica is reveling in anonymity pretending to be Imogen while Imogen is basking the limelight as perfect movie star Jessica.  But with a mysterious person leaking the next Starfield script online, unlikely romantic possibilities, and internet trolls, the girls start to realize the importance of what they already had.

I throughly enjoyed this book!  I remember liking Geekarella, but by the end, it felt like it was dragging, since we all knew the happy ending was right around the corner.  With this book, the tension and plot never slowed down.  Maybe because the whole story takes place over the comic-con weekend, so there was no time for it to drag?  Whatever the case may be, this one, in my opinion, was even better than the first.  I liked how it showed the ugly side of the Internet, how people don’t realize that what they say online does matter, and how insecure everyone is.  Imogen felt like she was never seen as herself, always in her brother’s shadow, while Jessica always felt like she wasn’t enough, for her fans, her agents, or herself.  It also brought up the question of being happy and how you shouldn’t try to conform yourself to other’s ideas of you.  

I think this book will be a great book for those geeky girls, the ones who feel like they don’t fit in when in reality they don’t need to.  Make sure you set your calendars for April when this book hits the shelves!

**Thanks Net Galley and Quirk Books for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.**

On Thin Ice

To kick off February, I started with this free teen romance book from Net Galley and Entangled Publishing!  On Thin Ice fits its genre well and knows it’s clientele, but it was just an okay read.

Set in Minnesota, the small town of Juniper Falls lives and breathes hockey.  Jake knows this all too well, as one of the star seniors of the high school hockey team.  But when a decades-long hockey hazing tradition goes terribly wrong, Jake is now on the sidelines and questioning his town’s adoration of all things hockey.  Enter Brooke, the new girl who moved to town to live with her grandmother.  She’s an outsider, and she’s dealing with the town gossip about her parents.  But when the school’s new JV girls’ hockey team needs new players, she decides to try being “normal” and play for the team…even though she’s never played hockey before.  Jake is helping coach the team, and he seems to be drawn to Brooke’s quiet strength.  But can she help him stand up for what he knows is right, even if it means going against the entire town?

Again, it’s obvious from the beginning how the story will play out…guy meets girl, they have a connection, conflict ensues, resolve by kissing.  But there is another facet to the story with Jake and the hazing charges.  It’s a conflict that’s applicable today with all the stories in the news about fraternity and sports hazing rituals.  It’s a good moral for the story, but again a very predictable ending.  The one thing that did bother me and I felt didn’t add to the story was the sex scene between Brooke and Jake.  I just don’t feel it sets the right morals for feelings-enhanced teens to see characters say “I love you…now we must have sex.”  There’s also a line between implied sex and explicitly stated sex, like in this book.  Anyways, that was the only part, as a parent and a middle school teacher, that felt wrong.

This book is actually the third in the Juniper Falls series, but the books are all about different kids in town, so reading them in order isn’t necessary.