The Bride Test (The Kiss Quotient, #2)

by Helen Hoang

[EBookObsessed]

Delightful! A wonderful follow up to The Kiss Quotient. I can’t wait to read more from Helen Hoang.

The Kiss Quotient was my favorite novel of 2018, and while Khai and Esme can’t supplant my love for Michael and Stella, they certainly worked their charms on me. What is amazing about story writing is that author Helen Hoang states in her author notes at the end of the story that Esme wasn’t originally intended to be the romantic heroine of this story. She was originally intended to be an impediment to Khai’s true love, but Esme charmed Helen charmed as well and the story changed to Esme and Khai. After finishing this marvelous story, I couldn’t imagine it going any other way. Esme was strong and honorable and absolutely perfect for Khai.

In Kiss Quotient, Stella as Asperger Syndrome and Michael learns to work with Stella’s quirks so they can reach a happily ever after, but Michael’s cousin Khai is just a smidge further on the autistic scale. Khai doesn’t believe that he can feel love and because of his stone heart, he has never pursued any type of romantic entanglement. So his mother takes things into her own hands and seeks to find a potential wife for him in Vietnam. She brings My over to California and gives her the summer to convince Khai to marry her. My picks Esmeralda (Esme), as her American name after her daughter’s favorite Disney character. Yes, that is the one lie of omission that brings Esme guilt throughout the story. She hasn’t confessed to Khai or his mother that she has a child. When she was a teen, she was pursued and seduced by a boy who wouldn’t marry her since her family was so poor.

Esme works hard to try to seduce Khai and he is not responsive to her attempts. She tries to make herself useful to him by straightening and doing chores, but he is unhappy with how she is doing things. She feels that her attempts to win Khai’s love are doomed to failure since he doesn’t seem to have any interest in her. When Khai confesses to her that he is autistic, she has no idea of what this means, but when he explains his sensitivity to touch, that she understands. Knowing that this is something Esme would never have guessed if Khai hadn’t told her specifically, she makes him agree to be more open with things that will bother him so she can adjust.

Once they work past this hurdle, Khai and Esme’s relationship begins to grow more intimate, except sex won’t solve all their issues. Esme sees what a kind and wonderful person Khai is and she is quickly growing to love him. But as her time in America begins to come to an end and Khai’s mother needs an answer whether there will be a wedding before Esme’s visa expires, Khai still isn’t willing to believe he could ever love Esme back.

While I liked watching Esme and Khai’s brother Quan work to break through Khai’s belief that he can’t feel emotions like other people, I absolutely adored Esme. In the beginning of the story, the one question she got right that the other candidates didn’t showed that even though Esme was dirt poor, living with her grandmother, mother, and daughter in a one room shack, she wouldn’t act sell her soul or stab Khai in the back for money or to achieve the American Dream. When Khai’s mother chased her down, she finally agreed to meet Khai and would marry him only if she could win his love.

With that opening scene, we could see the depth of Esme’s character. She tried to win Khai’s love but when she feared he wouldn’t love her back, she refused to marry just for a green card and while she continued to strive to win Khai, she took classes at the adult center to learn English and accounting to improve her life. After being tossed aside by the father of her child for an appropriate wife, Esme finds she keeps being passed over. She suffers from low self-esteem, but instead of being a sad sack and allowing life to kick her around, she fights harder every time life kicks her. And when she doesn’t believe Khai will ever love her, she is depressed, but then she starts to investigated how else she could extend her visa. She is very honorable. She cared too much for Khai and wouldn’t use him to stay in the country. Because she believed she had more value than life kept showing her, she wouldn’t accept less than his whole heart.

It was a delightful story and I breezed through it in a day because I simply didn’t want to put it down. If you didn’t get a chance to read The Kiss Quotient last year, do yourself a favor and grab both of these stories. You can thank me later.

Received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.