The Bride Test by Helen Hoang: My Review

Loved this just as much as the first book…

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang is a masterpiece. From the “set-up” to the first kiss, everything is laid out and played out perfectly.

The story follows Esme Tran, a girl who’s “always felt out of place.” When the book opens, Esme is living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City.

With a daughter out of wedlock and a job cleaning bathrooms for the wealthiest families in her area, she leaps at the opportunity to change her life.

Khai Diep isn’t your average rich guy. He has trouble understanding people’s emotions and motives, mostly because he doesn’t feel them (or so he thinks).

He doesn’t cry at funerals and he makes inappropriate remarks at weddings (like mentioning the death of the bride’s brother) and sees nothing wrong with it.

It’s Esme’s job to get him to fall in love with her over the summer and it won’t be easy.

Especially since Khai hates when people move his things and people in his space. As an adult with autism, navigating through the world is difficult for him, even when it comes to small things, like pleasantries and politeness.

Khai tells himself that once the summer is over, things will go back to normal.

Esme struggles to connect with him initially, but slowly, she begins to break down his walls and let her in, however reluctantly.

Soon, Khai finds himself wondering about her, worrying if she’s alright, and wishing she was around when she’s not.

It’s a cute transition that happens little by little, day by day. At first, he hates the smell of her fish sauce.

And she hates that she’s not really “Esme in Accounting,” the person she’s trying to portray herself to be to Khan at first because she doesn’t think he’ll accept her as she is.

A single mother with no education and a less than respectable job.

She tries to become someone he might accept, someone he might marry.

But she doesn’t realize that she’s perfect for him just the way she is now. It’s just that neither of them knows it yet.

This was a slow burn I actually didn’t mind.

Even though Khai kept shooting himself in the foot and refusing to correctly identify his feelings of love for Esme (which sends her running in the opposite direction more than once), it was cute to watch their love story unfold.

I loved the way the story ended.

The fact that they had to kind of trick Khai into getting jealous enough to fight for Esme and for what he really wanted was kinda cute.

Once Esme moved into her own apartment, I was wondering what direction the story would go in, but it wrapped up just as nicely as the first book in the series, The Kiss Quotient.

If you love a quirky romance, this should be your next pick.

Go grab your copy at your local bookstore.

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