“All the things that make you different make you perfect.”

I can't believe I forgot to mark this one as read! Enjoyed this one....last month I think....
It was cute - but full of sex scenes and more intimate details than I was expecting! We chose it for a book club and all of us were so surprised! But I did like the idea of the book - and the chemistry the characters had. It was cute, had an interesting plot and an easy read. I enjoyed it. ( )

It was a cute read; not gonna lie, it was a fun book to read on a plane while tired. However, some parts felt fanfic-y to me, which was a little disappointing since I expect higher quality from published books. IDK, I don't read a lot of romance-focused books, so I'm not sure if this book's quality is par for the course or what.

I picked it up because I was interested in the summary after seeing it on the Goodreads Choice Awards and I can see why it won now! The characters are cute, their relationship is cute, but it's not anything incredible. I would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a light-hearted book, but don't expect anything amazing in terms of character development or writing style. ( )

Really strange tone: raunchy but trying to be sweet? Didn’t succeed for me. Quit in the middle.

Still strange tone but characters growing on me. ( )

5 Stars!
Spice: 4/5
Love a woman in STEM! This book had a great plot and the spicy scenes fit in book well. The FMC has Asperger’s and hires an escort as a tutor. ( )

Econometrician Stella Lane with Asperger's thinks she needs to learn how to perform better sexually in order to date, marry and give her mother the grandchildren she just asked for. Her 3 past sexual encounters have been disasters. Her solution is to hire an escort to teach her. Enter Michael, beautiful man of Vietnamese and Swedish descent, with a load of problems and back story. He agrees to 3 sessions which he feels will get her started. Needless to say things don't go as planned and things go longer and outside of their simple sessions. I loved this book. Both characters are so needy and have just what the other needs, they just need to learn to communicate. The story is definitely explicit but with such a loving undertone. ( )

Got bored after a quarter of the book. Didn't finish. Will give away. ( )

I mean, it was cute, I guess. I really wanted to like it more than I did. *shrug* Left with an overall feeling of "meh" about it, though. ( )

This one was an absolute delight. Psychologically rich and compelling. Seems like I need to read more contemporary romance. ( )

I wish there were more than five stars to give :) I loved this book! Stella was so charming and sweet and I really liked Michael. I can't wait the second book in in the series! ( )

5⭐️ I absolutely loved this book. I tried reading book 2 before I knew there was a book one and just couldn’t get into the story. It was because I was missing out on this love story. They are pretty much stand alone stories and you do not need to read either before or after to get the individual story. There is only one small tie in from this book in the second book.

I def prefer this book over the second but love both so much I am waiting for the 3rd.

This love story grabbed my attention because it could be real. There are so many people living a very fictional life that you never know what differences, hardships or trials they may be facing. ( )

I’m definitely in the minority opinion on this one. 😶

I decided to pick this book up as part of my attempt to read more of the genres I rarely reach for. The romance genre and I have never been close pals, but it's mostly because I just prefer my stories to have copious amounts of magic/fantasy worlds/sword fight and unfortunately those things don't appear often in romance books. But I found a couple new adult romances this year that I enjoyed, and everyone was raving about "The Kiss Quotient" so I decided to pick it up.

Let's start with the good:
Stella Lane, the main character, was the best part. She is a econometrician working with numbers and digital algorithms and a bunch of other math stuff I'm too dumb to understand. Stella is incredibly smart and driven and loves what she does; she is also on the Autism spectrum and has Asperger's, and struggles to understand social norms and connect with people sexually. So, she makes a plan of action and hires a male escort who can practice with her. Being inside Stella's head was the most interesting part of the book, and I think it was very well done. As someone who is invested in the presence and representation of Autistic characters, I was excited to read Stella's portions.

Now, this is where things began to go downhill for me. (The rest of this is just a looooong rant, so skip to the last paragraph if you want the Sparknotes version of my thoughts)

Enter Michael Phan, the attractive, martial-arts loving escort Stella selects. Everyone compares him to a K-drama star and every few pages another group of women swoon at his feet as he walks by. It's pushed into the readers face just HOW UNBELIEVABLY HOT Michael every chance possible. Unfortunately, as hot as he is, Michael is also an ass. Yeah, that's right, I'M SAYING IT. I feel like every review of this book I see people are drooling over how amazing Michael is but...like...where??? On page 64, shortly after meeting Stella for the first time, Michael watches her bend over to write something and demonstrates, in Michael's opinion, "the only reason why a woman should wear a pencil skirt: to show off the perfectly rounded curves of her fine ass."
Yup, that's is, that's the ONLY REASON a women should wear a skirt she feels comfortable in is so the male gaze can take in her ass.
Then Michael and Stella get down to business and begin practicing and we come to what I have dubbed "The Nipple Pages". The first description we get of Stella's nipples are from Michael, and he says they are "the kind of nipples men and babies dream about."
Um, yeah, nothing says "steamy sex scene" like mentioning nipples that BABIES DREAM ABOUT. I can literally think of 4 dozen different ways to have phrased that that DO NOT include dragging a baby into your fantasy.
But Michael's not done yet, he still has more to say about these nips. He makes the astute observation that Stella should be careful with where she puts her nipples because, and I quote, "she'd poke an eye out with those things." ??? Is this....supposed to be funny? Like is this straight sex humor or something?
He then goes on to utter what might be the funniest phrase I've ever read in a romance book: "Only in his line of work was blindness by nipple assault a true hazard."
SJSSKSKSKKSKS NIPPLE ASSAULT Y'ALL I AM SCREECHING. Really, NIPPLE ASSAULT was the best phrase you could come up with?! Literally all I can picture is those women from the Austin Powers movies who have machine guns in their bras.

It was stuff like that mixed in throughout the sex scenes that made them completely bizarre to read. Michael tastes ice cream by eating it out of Stella's mouth (page 79), taking her panties and keeping them to smell later (page 198), and Michael and his friend Quan look down on women who don't have the same sexual viewpoints as them; on page 107 we get a blast of "Is she a virgin? Shit, is she saving it for marriage? Run like my mom is after you." Yeah, that's cool, because a woman who chooses for herself to wait is obviously ~cRaZy~ and needs to be avoided. Nice. Cool. Love that.

Michael also has this overbearing "alpha male" attitude that I can't stand. I feel like the best example of this is pages 144-145 when Michael comes to find Stella at work and forces her to go to dinner. When she says she hasn't eaten much, Michael quips, "I'm going to feed you" and proceeds to drive Stella to his moms. When she explicitly says to him, "I'd really like to go home" and is visibly uncomfortable with doing this, he ignores her wishes and makes her go eat.
Later, Michael repeatadly calls Stella and sends her flowers and gifts after she point blank asks him to stop. Page 304: "Each day that week, he's called and asked her out to dinner. Each day, she refused. She didn't need or want his help." THEN the ass decides (after Stella has asked him to stop contacting her) to SHOW UP outside her job. She tells him, "You need to stop all of this", to which hot Michael answers, "It's not just a little romantic? I don't have a lot of experience with courting, so you'll have to excuse me if I come across too strong."
WTF, Michael, that't not "coming across too strong" that's stalking a woman after she's told you to stop.

Michael also goes on and on and ON about "the badness inside himself". From the first chapter from Michael's POV, he keeps dropping hints about all the bad stuff his dad did and how "the same badness is now in him". Almost as much as readers are told how super hot Michael is, we're also repeatedly told how bad he is. Michael constantly is afraid of "being bad" to other people because of his dad.
But here's the thing: Michael's dad wormed his way into relationships with women, got a bunch of their money, and then ran. He did it to Michael's mom and apparently he's still off doing the same to other women. There's no hint at ALL that Michael is anything like this, but he's so caught up with the fact that he's going to be like his dad. Michael makes it seem like he's got this awful disease that makes him "bad" but literally it's just about not making bad moral choices?? These portions of the book were so overly angsty to read, and just overall poorly written.
On page 210 Michael contemplates this: "He knew people. It would be so easy to take advantage of them. There was very little preventing him from doing exactly that, nothing but a shaky code of ethics and the desire not to follow in his dad's footsteps."
Michael. A code of ethics is literally all that is keeping ANY OF US from doing bad stuff. You're not special for not wanting to to bad things?? Get off your soapbox.

Maybe some people are into boys like Michael. I don't get it. AT ALL. But everyone has a preference so I guess my preference is just way different than the majority of people who read this,
The only reason this book isn't getting a 1-star rating from me is because the Stella portions were well done and I truly liked her as a character. It was just Michael that ruined the book for me personally, and I can't help but wish Stella had ended up with someone different (and better). I think there are better romance writers out there and have no plans to read anything else by this author. ( )

The Kiss Quotient was one of my two picks from Book of the Month Club in June. My reading stalled in May and June when life was getting in my way, work especially, so I got behind. When I started reading it yesterday, I had wondered what in the description of the book had led me to choose this one out of the five June selections. Romance and pretty detailed sex scenes might not have enticed me. There are really two protagonists in this novel, Stella Lane and Michael Larsen. What makes Stella unique is her high-spectrum autism, and most of the story is told from the omniscient point of view, limited to Stella’s inner dialog, but also, occasionally, Michael’s inner dialog. The autistic perspective was fresh and it elevated what might have been a pedestrian romance story. It’s a good beach read — not that I’m on a beach. ;-) ( )

Nice relationship, it shows anxiety in a real way. Overall all the characters are well rounded! ( )

Recommended: sure
For someone looking for a quick read that's cute enough, for someone who has no idea about autism and this might help be more humanizing for those who have it, someone looking for some detailed and generously frequent sex scenes

Uh, well, I did not expect to be knee deep in a detailed sexy scene in the first chapters in the book. She's hiring a prostitute, and I'm sitting here waiting for the kooky mixup. But nope... he actually shows up and proceeds to seduce her as she asks. Well, at least it was decently written and they didn't make him a misogynistic ass.

The story was ok, the characters were ok, the romance was ok. What knocked it down to 3 stars for me was the lackluster conflict towards the end. It felt like the standard weak issue where if the people JUST ACTUALLY TALKED TO EACH OTHER, nothing would've even been an issue. It's hard to enjoy the story when I get to here, and I'm like "Oh they're actually both idiots."

I did appreciate that her autism wasn't necessarily her defining characteristic, even though it was a motivator for her in this aspect of her life. But she recognizes that it also makes her who she is, and has positive benefits too, like her ability to focus so clearly on things that helps make her excellent at her work. Overall that seemed very positive, as well as giving insight into how someone with autism can also enjoy sex, social situations, etc. and are just people.

Was it predictable? Kinda, yeah. Did I enjoy it? Yeah, it was a quick "good enough" kind of read. But you're also not missing out on anything huge if you skip it. ( )

[b:The Kiss Quotient|36199084|The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient, #1)|Helen Hoang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1527983633s/36199084.jpg|57828311]

Stella Michael= Awesome Sauce!

We have a mathematical perfect match!! This one is a winner hands down!!!!!!
The Kiss Quotient was breathtaking!

So what happens when you're smart, have Asperger's and your parents want you to get married and provide a progeny of grandchildren but you aren't good at social situations or intimacy? Well, you hire an escort of course!! Stella Lane is in her thirties. She is very successful and driven. She's an economist and a workaholic. She knows her limitations and having sex is one of them. She believes that if she can conquer her fears of intimacy, she can then be in a relationship. Michael Pham is paying his mother's hospital bills by using his body as an escort. He's part Vietnamese and part Swedish. In other words, this combination makes him stunning. When his next job takes him to meet Stella, he can't help but be grateful. She fits his hot librarian fantasy to a tee. After their first meeting, he knows he's in trouble. He usually doesn't see a client twice but this time he wants to make an exception.
I love Stella and Michael together. Michael was so patient and understanding. He was also great with his whole family. He had his own insecurities and fears. I liked to think that being with Stella helped him realized he was worth it. Stella was amazing too. She tried her hardest to face her limitations. It takes great courage to try something new when you're so used to your routine and structure. I can't but fan myself at their sexy times. Let's just say WOW is an understatement. The Kiss Quotient was a wonderfully crafted novel. It's uniqueness and fascinating characters sets it apart from the rest. I found myself doing a happy dance after finishing it. The ending was just perfect! I'm crossing my fingers we get to see more characters getting their own books. The author has plenty of material. This is a new author for me but I will be back as soon as my hold at the library is available of The Bride Test! ( )

I thought this was really great barring a few problematic moments. It bothered me that Stella was sexually harassed at work multiple times and she didn't report the guy (or have a good reason not to report him). There were some cringe-y moments when cliche levels were high (personally, I'm over a man needing to "claim" a woman and violently defend her honor). Still, this book is refreshingly different from the majority of contemporary romance novels. We have a Vietnamese-American stud and a heroine on the Autism spectrum. We have a pretty non-judgmental depiction of sex work. Plot-wise I was struck that the most graphic sex scenes happen early in the book and then taper off towards the end (most romance novels I've read are the other way around). In the end, the best review I can give is to say I'd be happy to read this author's other books and that's certainly true here. ( )

Cute chick lit story, not too cheesy with some steamy ( )

This was cute- #ownvoices romance with a high functioning autistic heroine, and a sexy book that didn't make me cringe. Would it be weird to cast Daniel Henney as Michael if this ever gets adapted?

I also read this because I checked out [b:The Bride Test|39338454|The Bride Test (The Kiss Quotient, #2)|Helen Hoang|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548428073l/39338454._SY75_.jpg|60976615] first and belatedly realized it was the second in a series of sorts, whoops. ( )

So great that I finished reading it in one day. This is the kind of romantic novel that I can enjoy. I loved that the protagonist had autism and feel like this book will be great for people on the spectrum. Looking forward to more of Hoang’s books. ( )

What a super cute and enjoyably steamy #ownvoices romance, featuring a female lead with autism and a male lead with a Vietnamese background.

Stella and Michael are such likable and fully-formed characters, making this a really strong working example of how #ownvoices books are transforming the publishing landscape. Romance is not known for being a diverse genre, and the small, immersive details of these characters' lives give this otherwise fluffy book a lot of depth.

Just as important, Hoang deconstructs myths and stereotypes that inform the narrative arc of similar books (I'm side-eyeing you, The Rosie Project). This novel also tackles male sex work in what I judged was a thoughtful and respectful manner, even if it is the setup for a romance arc.

Three stars because I'm not a romance reader and the "conflict due to miscommunication / concealed information" got old for me after a while. There are also some scenes where male jealousy is depicted as romantic, and this is a big turnoff for me. Otherwise this is a book that promotes healthy and respectful relationships.

If you enjoy contemporary romance, highly recommended. ( )

DNF @ Page 76

Not at all what I expected... I thought it would be about a woman with autism who takes things very literally and being an econometrician, analyses her interactions with whoever she dates... But the characters seem very 1 dimensional and flat. ( )

Just a heads up for traditional romance fans,this book does not have a long tease. There is no chase. It is what it is. This is the that type of book where there really isn't much of problem and if there is a problem it gets solved super quick. I have a feeling some people are going to be irritated by the lack of obstacles,setbacks,etc., One of the main characters is on the autistic spectrum and some may disagree with how she is portrayed. It might be somewhat of a task for some readers to get use to someone so technical and precise. This is just a quick " so you know☺" in case someone wanted a quick peak of what to expect. This will be more about how the book made me feel and less about its technical merits.

Michael is yummy,ugh. ( )

i really like the autistic rep here and the insight into how she thinks and what she's thinking. but the story is too over the top for me; i mean i guess it's a reverse pretty woman situation so i was okay with this storyline ages ago. but now it's hard for me. i think her writing is good and what she's doing for autistic romance is good, and i think that the misinterpretations on both sides make sense and that's good. i also liked michael's huge family and the interactions with all the sisters. i liked this a little better than the other one i've read by her, but still would like a little more. ( )

Great read, and a super-fast one too. Much more "spicy" than my typical fare... I prefer much less spice.

I enjoyed Stella's point of view. Very easy to identify with her, even though I'm not autistic (that I know of... pretty sure it's a solid "no". Well, maybe a somewhat solid "no". Aw nuts, now I'm thinking about it. Look what you did, The Kiss Quotient. Look what you did). Her naivete and innocence was refreshing. She wanted to seduce Michael who was teaching her how to seduce a man... so good.

Michael's point of view was frustrating to me; while people inherit many traits and and mannerisms from their parents, philandering whilst in a relationship seems to be an avoidable behavior rather than a sure thing.

Phillip was clearly the "villain" of this book in that he was an antagonist, but I think he was treated lightly. I mean, he did get punched in the eye, but man... telling Stella that they were dating after a miserably-failed date was super-weird.

Aliza super-spilled-the-beans by asking Michael if he'd meet her parents if she paid enough. I would have liked to see more of the fallout from that comment. How do her parents feel about her hiring an escort when they believed she had a boyfriend? Would they be weirded out and would her dad try to talk her out of it? More scenes of that would be good. Like the righteous indignation of the well-meaners in rom-coms that evaporates when they realize how much in love the hero and heroine are.

I don't think I've read many romance novels, so I'm not sure how large a subgenre of autistic romance is, but I'd like to read more of it. I'll probably move on to The Bride Test pretty soon. ( )

The Kiss Quotient is a dual perspective novel about Stella who has Asperger's and Michael who is an escort. Stella has been with three men and she has never enjoyed it. She has trouble in social situations and her parents are always pressuring her to find a husband. She dreads going on dates and kissing. So she decides it's time to practice so she can get better. That's when Michael comes in. He has bills. So each Friday night he accepts a client. He never spends more than a night with one. Until Stella comes along.

There were so many aspects of this story that I loved. First off the author also has Asperger's and says that Stell's actions and journey were inspired in part by herself. I also loved learning more about Vietnamese culture. Michael's family came from Vietnam. There were mentions of Asian films and shows as well as martial arts and foods. I also appreciated the mentions of econometrics, what Stella does. While I think some of the sex scenes were a bit much for me, overall I loved this book and can't wait to read more by this author! ( )