By Lília
Helen Hoang is best known for her debut romance novel The Kiss Quotient, where the female main character was openly autistic for the first time. The author herself was diagnosed as an adult with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The reason for such late diagnosis is that autism manifests differently in boys than in girls.
And while autism was not new in romance novels, it had never been mentioned in so many words, and certainly not about a female character. So when The Kiss Quotient came out it made the news and was an instant bestseller.
In all three of her books Hoang shows us some different facets autism can have.
Picture from Helen Hoang's website
In The Kiss Quotient Helen Hoang presents us with an autistic main character who knows she’s autistic, and lives her life to her potential without that being a burden to her family. But the world around her keeps trying to change her anyway, sometimes to the detriment of her well-being. Enter Michael, an escort who in the end always accepts her as she is. Quite spicy.
The Bride Test is about Khai, Michael’s cousin, and Esme, a Vietnamese import bride. As an autistic man Khai has difficulty understanding and expressing his feelings, and he thinks he’s defective. Esme grabs the chance to go to America as the opportunity to save her family and sets out to seduce him. But her seduction is affecting herself more than him… or so it seems. Hoang manages to show that Khai’s feelings actually run very deeply and he has a different way of showing them. He fortunately finds a way to show it to Esme in the end. Sexy but also heartbreaking AND heartwarming.
In The Heart Principle, violinist Anna is suffering from sudden notoriety and feeling so pressured to perform she actually cannot do it. During a “hiatus” in her relationship with her boyfriend she meets Quan – Khai’s brother and Michael’s cousin – who is recuperating from dealing with sickness. It’s a rocky start, but Quan accepts Anna as she is and sees she’s probably a undiagnosed autistic woman. The learning curve about autism and depression is heart shattering, but Ms. Hoang deals with mental illness in such a wonderful way that you can understand what the person is going through, and how dealing with it might be difficult at times. This is such a wonderful read! My heart broke and healed in so many different ways.
