2020: #10 – The Kiss Quotient (Helen Hoang)

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
Series: The Kiss Quotient #01
Published by Berkley on May 30, 2018
Genres: contemporary romance
Pages: 324


Also by this author: The Bride Test
Also in this series: The Bride Test

There's not enough data in the world to predict what will make your heart tick.
 
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases--a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
 
It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice--with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan--from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...
 
Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...

This was a perfect, fun read for my vacation!

Stella is a young woman with autism who is convinced that her autism is keeping her from having good sex. With a mother who is hounding her to find a relationship, she tries looking at the problem the best way she knows how — analytically. Surely, if she is bad at sex, she should find someone who is good at sex to show her what she is doing wrong, and how to do it right. So, Stella hires a sex worker.

Michael is using sex work to supplement his day job salary to help pay for his mother’s medical bills. But he isn’t sure what to think when Stella asks to hire him for multiple sessions to show him the ropes. Seeing clients more than once isn’t supposed to be part of the plan.

What follows is a romance that ticks off the usual plot points, but it’s sweet and entertaining and sexy. I definitely will be reading Hoang’s next book.

I read this for the PopSugar Reading Challenge this year — this book fulfilled the “book about or by a woman in STEM” prompt.

Other reviews:

• “I’d give Hoang’s debut novel a solid 3.5 stars. While it was a great read, it was a little too on again off again, which got old after the third time.” — The Paper Tide
• “Both Michael and Stella are characters you’ll fall in love with and care for from the very beginning until the end.  They have their own issues to work through aside from their relationship.” — Under the Covers Book Blog
• “I mostly liked the first half of the book because it was an easy read… But then I got supremely fed up of the endlessly cliched plot “developments”… Lol at calling them developments!” — A Little Haze Book Blog