Bookish Thoughts

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 educa...

I inhaled this book. I took a long lunch because I couldn't put it down. I cried on the metro to the point that I had to dig kleenex out of my purse. I let my kid watch Sesame Street so I could keep reading. I stayed up past my bedtime to finish it. I loved this book. The Kiss Quotient  is about Stella: an autistic econometrician (she writes the algorithms that drive internet ads) whose mom is making noise about wanting grandchildren. But Stella's never had much luck with men and dating and particularly sex. So she does what she's always done when she needs to master a new skill: she hires a professional. Enter Michael, a male escort who's trying to earn money to pay for his mom's medical bills. Stella engages him for a series of sessions to help her get better at sex so she can enter the dating pool with confidence and find a husband to make her mom happy. But it quickly becomes apparent that the problem isn't Stella, but all the assholes out there. And tha...