The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

The Bride Test

Author: Helen Hoang

Genre: Romance 

Date: 19 October 2021

Rating: 3 stars

Review: Romance, if well-written, can be some of the best books one reads. Think of all the classics. If they were written today they would be tagged as ‘Romance’ novels and looked down upon by the Literary Fiction crowd who would rather read books they don’t understand than be caught reading a Romance book by other snobs like them. Or worse chicklit! Imagine Jane Austen in the chicklit section of your local bookshop! I, along with most of the reader community, have started gaining a respect for the genre. I am actually loving the books that newer authors are coming out with in this genre, especially because of how many different angles and representations have come out of it. Helen Hoang with her books that feature neurodivergent main characters is, I think, at the top of her game in this field. 

I read her first book The Kiss Quotient earlier this year and fell in love with everything about it. The Kiss Quotient was based on her own struggles with being a woman on the autistic spectrum and how that changes the way she deals with romance and sex. It was steamy! Oh God was it steamy! I kind of gobbled up the book in little more than one sitting. The second book in the series, The Bride Test, was not as good as the first but it was still a very enjoyable read. 

The Bride Test is the story of Khai, a character that we were introduced to in the first book and I found adorable. Khai has no feelings, or at least that’s what he believes because his autism means that he does not react to things the same way that the people around him do. This means that he believes he is also incapable of love. But his mother would beg to differ. On a trip to Vietnam, Khai’s mother meets Esme, a janitor who impresses her with her kindness and strangely, I think, ability to clean toilets (?). Esme is a single mother, who lives with her mother and grandmother. When she gets the opportunity to go to America, meet and seduce a drop-dead gorgeous man and hopefully get her green card by marrying him, she kind of jumps to the opportunity, not going to lie. But things aren’t that easy, Khai isn’t your normal, easy to seduce guy and when she has to keep her daughter a secret things just keep getting murkier. 

I think I would have liked the book more if I didn’t have such glaring problems with it. The story was cute in the vein of The Kiss Quotient. Khai is an adorable character despite his prickly nature and ability to say the worst things at the worst moments. I think most of my problems were with Esme’s character. There was something about the way she was written during the ‘seduction phase’ that reminded me of those memes about women written by men. She wears only a t-shirt. She eats mangoes in the most seductive way possible. She cooks and cleans for him. She does not wear a bra! If she was written by a white man I would Manic Pixie Dream Girl with a healthy dose of an Asian fetish. Esme does become a little more three-dimensional when she decides to go to Night School and get a degree.

One thing that I really liked about the book was the discussion about Khai’s inability to understand female pleasure. Then he learns about it and God does he learn about it. I think the sex scenes were done really well. It maintained the whole steaminess through rose-tinted glasses vibe that you don’t get from Dark Romance books. Now, let’s talk about the end. In Anuja Chauhan’s Those Pricey Thakur Girls the climax is a mess of characters making grand gestures, loud proclamations and melodramatic actions. Still, it wasn’t as Bollywood-esque as this one. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun should take notes from The Bride Test. Esme is getting married to Khai’s elder brother because clearly that’s what you do when the younger brother breaks your heart. The wedding is interrupted by Esme’s long lost father who she has been looking for forever but he finds her right on her wedding day. (Also how does he know she’s going to be in court?) And then Khai interrupts the wedding again because he realises that he can actually fall in love! 

A perfectly melodramatic end to an absolutely melodramatic book! I may just go ahead and pick the third book because I quite like the guy the book is going to focus on.