Amy 
romance
In The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, Stella, a brilliant mathematician with Asperger's Syndrome, decides she needs some
lessons on dating and sex in order to help her meet the right man and satisfy
her mother’s desires for grandchildren.
She finds an escort willing to help.
This is definitely a summer beach read.
Every time I thought I had this novel figured out and tried
to pigeonhole it, the story changed gears in an appealing way. It is like a combination of The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding, and Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James plus the movie Pretty Woman but where the gender roles are reversed. This novel contains lots of very detailed sex. So, if you don’t like reading that sort of
thing, this novel is not for you.
Despite the illegality at the heart of the basis of the storyline, and
the fact that I feel the author must have been a single child because the
scenes involving siblings seemed exaggerated and unrealistic, I really enjoyed
the ride. I found the characters
endearing (although, not very deep) and the storyline to be fun and creative. However, the ending, while happy, was
anti-climactic and rushed. Still it was a great novel with which to unwind
amidst the stress of moving to a new house.
The audiobook was narrated by Carly Robins who did a great
job. It wasn’t an overly challenging
novel for a narrator but she seemed well-suited for it. I’ll give her an A.
Amy 
In The Bride Test, Esme, a single Vietnamese mother down on her luck, was asked
to come to America to be a bride by a woman who wanted to arrange a marriage
for her son. Esme initially felt weird about the proposal but her own mother
convinced her that her future would be better in America.
This was another fun romance by Helen Hoang. I loved the story setup and the characters
and the hurdles. It’s mostly just a
romance so I don’t have much to say about it.
If you like romances with lots of sexual tension, you’ll enjoy this one.
Adding to the quality of the story, the main characters each had significant
hurdles to mount (as with The Kiss Quotient, one of them is autistic) and were
easy to like.
I listened to the audiobook and Emily Woo Zeller did a
marvelous job. She had male voices and
accents and was a great voice actor. I
give her an A+.
Amy 
In The Heart Principle, Anna and Quan are both dealing with life issues when they find each other on a dating site and decide to have a quick hookup with no strings
attached to blast them out of their respective blues. Except, that night turns
into another and another until they begin to realize they’ve developed a
relationship and that they care about each other. But they still have their
personal issues when more problems are added to their piles. How will they get
through this?
I really enjoyed the first half of the novel. The characters
were cute and their blossoming relationship was fun. But then Anna became
annoying to read about. Her family situation was extremely frustrating. It’s
not that the situation was unrealistic—it was that it was depressing and not
what I wanted to be reading about. And then Quan, who had always felt very
unreal to me, went off the deep end. I skimmed a lot of the last quarter of the novel. There
was no question that they would end up together in the end and I didn’t care
enough about them to read all the gory details of their crises. I just wanted
to get to the part where they realize they need to be together. Plus, after
having really loved Helen Hoang’s first two novels, I wanted to finish it. But
this novel, sadly, was nowhere near as good as her first two.
I understand that Anna is based largely on the author
herself, as a sort of memoir. I’m sorry Hoang had a difficult time and I’m glad
that she was able to work through it. And I’m sure that there will be readers
who appreciate her honesty and can find themselves in the pages too. I myself
had to assist with my mother’s care when she was dying and I can relate to that part.
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