Synopsis: 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…
Review: I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting The Kiss Quotient to hit as close to home as it did. Stella has Asperger’s, and I found her perspective to be really interesting. I haven’t been diagnosed with anything on the Autism/Asperger’s spectrum, but I did relate to a lot of the anxiety and overstimulation Stella regularly deals with. I also heavily related to Stella’s feelings of feeling inadequate in relationships. I loved seeing her relationship with Michael develop. He definitely had some “aggressive male” moments that I didn’t enjoy quite as much, but I had a ton of fun watching their fake dating agreement develop.
The story is a pretty standard romance. Stella and Michael have some pretty intense sex scenes, but they have sweet relationship moments too. Stella has some interesting moments with Michael’s family too as she makes some conversational mistakes. Seeing her think through her conversations and realize what she did wrong was another familiar trait. The thing I appreciated the most from this book is Michael quickly cutting out this idea that Stella is bad at sex. He is patient with her, and he genuinely enjoys her company even though she isn’t as experienced as him. There are some great moments of growth for Michael too as he starts to realize how unsatisfying his lifestyle of constantly having sex with different partners really is. The Kiss Quotient included other moments of pure intimacy that didn’t have as much to do with sex as one might think. The biggest downside is that there were some problems that were easily resolved with Stella’s money or connections. Considering there are companion novels, I wish some things like medical expenses, were revisited in other books. I haven’t read any of the companion books yet, so maybe this will be brought back up, but it seemed pretty resolved by the end of The Kiss Quotient.
Solid romance with a lot of character growth from Stella and Michael.
4 howls
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