Helen Hoang’s Romances on the Spectrum
by eileenw
In The Bride Test by Helen Hoang (paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook download), Khai Diep doesn’t believe that he’s capable of feeling emotion—not grief, not love, nothing. He deeply believes something is broken inside of him. But his mother won’t let anything stand in the way of her quest for grandchildren, not even her own son, so she returns to her native Vietnam to find him a bride. She comes back to California with Esme Tran, a woman who has never been able to escape the slums she grew up in and, in her own way, has always felt as out of place as Khai does ... not that it makes things any smoother between them as Khai's mother forces them to a share the same house.
Like Helen Hoang’s first novel, The Kiss Quotient (paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook download), The Bride Test’s romantic leads feature a character on the Autism spectrum, as well as aspects of Asian American immigrant family experiences. These #OwnVoices novels drew me in; they delivered everything a good romance novel should and kept me up way too late just so I could finish reading the story.
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