Khai Diep doesn't believe that he can love, that his autism prevents him from feeling love so his mother decides that she's going to solve his problems by getting him a girlfriend which he agrees to go along with. Esme Tran agrees to go along with this, if only to see if she can find a better life for herself and her daughter. She's living with Khai and he's finding himself at least not annoyed at her presence. And as things progress it just seems that his life is more complicated every day, but interesting.
The conversation between Khai, Michael and Quan was so much fun. ( )

I enjoyed this book immensely and I was sure I would give it five stars - right until the ending, which was, I'm sorry to say, quite horrible. It was like one of those crazy, silly comedies and I hated it, so finally I gave this book only four stars.

The story was simple and cute: Esme, a very poor girl from Vietnam, goes to the USA to meet and marry Khai. Khai is autistic and it's his mother who chose Esme as his future wife. He's not very happy about it at first, but soon he discovers that maybe it's not such a bad idea.

I really liked Khai, he was a sweetheart. He always tried to make people happy and he was so clumsy with people and kept saying and doing the wrong things. And the first sex scene was hilarious.

I didn't like Esme. She was dishonest, she didn't tell neither Khai nor his mother about her daughter, which was a huge lie. She kept hiding her thoughts from Khai, although both he and his mother asked her not to do this. She kept taking his things without asking for permission - for example his dead cousin's bike. She cut the tree in his garden with a kitchen cleaver, for heaven's sake, and she didn't even discuss it with him first. She run from him and didn't take his phone calls, she didn't seem to care, that he worried about her. She seemed very selfish and untrustworthy to me.

Still, I enjoyed the story and I'm happy I read it. I will definitely read the next book by this author.

From my blog: https://dominikasreadingchallenge.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-bride-test-by-helen-h...
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3.5 ⭐️ ‘s : The love story is interesting. Some of the dependency can get boring, but that is with any romance. I kept reading because I love that this story shares any and everyone is capable of loving.

The writing style is good and the relationships in the story come off the page as though they could be real. ( )

Recommended: sure
For fans of a touching little romance

I feel like this is a nice, simple story. I liked it more than the first in the series, [b:The Kiss Quotient|36199084|The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient, #1)|Helen Hoang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1527983633s/36199084.jpg|57828311], but I'm probably rating it lower. The first book, I had no idea of the premise when I started reading it so it got a boost from me having legitimately no idea what might happen. With this one, I had known what it was going to be about, so there weren't really any surprises and it was just a nice smooth ride through an easy happy story.

I adore Esme, and love the way the ending was handled. She's a consistently strong and admirable character who fights for what she wants and deserves. The first five chapters had a lot of moments that made me laugh aloud in public while reading, which is always fun. I guess after that though, nothing really grabbed me, and so, three stars.

See more reviews and bookish thoughts here -> https://baileysbooks.home.blog ( )

Not a fan.

Read this on a plane and while on vacation and super tired from long days of outdoor activities and it was good for that sort of distracted/uncomfortable/tired brain space but I didn’t enjoy the story much at all. ( )