The Bride Test

Helen Hoang's second novel turns it's focus to Michael's cousin, Khai, and the woman his mother brings over from Vietnam to be his wife. While she doesn't quite force an arranged marriage on the two, giving them a summer to decide if they want to get married and allowing for the possibility that Esme might choose to return home at the end, it still all seems a bit old-fashioned. But the book does what it can to address the throw-back trope and ultimately everything works out.

I didn't end up liking this book quite as much as The Kiss Quotient (though to be fair, I couldn't put The Kiss Quotient down), but it was still fun and entertaining. Esme is a force to be reckoned with. She wants to come to America and provide a better life for herself and her daughter, but her definition of better life also means not compromising her values. She won't agree to a loveless marriage, and when things with Khai start to fall apart, she quickly shifts her focus to education and the possibility of obtaining a student visa so she can attend college in the states.

For his part Khai has a lot of emotional baggage to work through and not very many resources to do that. As much as I sympathized with him, he was a frustrating character. But I liked the relationship between him and Esme and they ways they found to accommodate each other, even when they were just living as roommates.

All in all it was a cute, quick book with a fantastic heroine who I was rooting for the whole time. She found love in the end, but she found a lot of other things, too. And it was nice that her happy ending included so many different things.

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