The credit for that goes to our amazing book The Kiss Quotient. It was universally loved and will go in the TN Book Hall of Fame. If your summer schedule is already in full swing and you missed our meet up, let’s take a trip down memory lane.
Last (Wo)men Standing
Our intention for this meeting was to bring it back to the live streams of days past since so many of us here at That’s Normal who got advanced copies loved this book. We figured we could babble on for hours about it! Well, life gets in the way, so in the end, it was just Angela and me, and neither of us has gone live before. So if you were one of the 3 people tuning in to our first live experience, boy, you are so lucky. I’m assuming it was the best video you’ve ever seen, but I refuse to watch it back so I will truly never know. If you missed it, it lives on the Boozy Book Club Facebook page in perpetuity.
After our foray into live videos, we brought it back to our typical Q and A style and everyone had a lot to say. Turns out you all loved this book as much as we did!
Some of the most insightful conversations focused on the representation of autism in the romance genre:
I thought the author did a great job of portraying the different quirks that those on the autism spectrum can experience, while making her incredibly relatable! Stella’s ability to zone in on certain problems is her biggest asset when it comes to her job, and her biggest weakness in relationships. – Elizabeth
As someone who really hasn’t had much interaction with anyone on the spectrum (that I know of, at least) it was interesting to me. It’s actually why I added my parentheses above because it’s very possible that I have interacted with someone like Stella and not even realized it. – Keary
I really appreciated the first-person perspective the author could give on females and autism. I’ve read some of her interviews and she’s right: the typical symptoms people imagine are more aligned with males with autism. I felt it was a great way to introduce readers to a different perspective on autism, and might even give more visibility to female autism. But with sexy bits thrown in for fun! – Courtney
Consent:
Normally, I love romance novels where men just seem to know what the woman likes and goes for it (consent is clearly implied, but not necessarily asked or said out loud), and it’s great for everyone – there’s this confidence in the male that is totally sexy and I love it. Normally, when I think of someone asking “is this ok for you” etc. during the act, I picture it more out of insecurity on the male part and it’s a total turn off.
BUT – with Michael it was still totally sexy! It still had this incredible confidence behind it – like “I know what I’m doing, and I promise it will be good, but I want you to be comfortable”. And him constantly reminding her that she had the power to say no. It was done in a confident, sexy, “I want to take care of you and make you feel good” way that I loved. – Elizabeth
And Michael’s hotness factor:
I mean, he made her a dress to her exact taste and measurements WITHOUT EVER MEASURING HER. With a tape, anyway. His hands/eyes knew her that well?!? Swoon! – Courtney
Anyone with a passion is sexy. It could be for lizards but if they light up when they talk about it I’m into it…ok, maybe lizards would be weird…but I can get behind fashion design. Give me that Tim Gunn sass!! – Emily*
* yeah, I’m including a quote from myself. I never said I wasn’t self-centered!
This book was so well loved, we talked about it for the amount of time we normally talk about two books. It was so well loved that it got a pretty much unanimous 5 bottle rating.
Summertime Sadness
Well, it’s really only summertime sadness if you can’t live without Boozy Book Club. We tried it, but everyone’s just too busy to keep a diligent reading schedule over the summer. Go forth and read your beach reads and your fluff books. That’s what summer’s for. And you know we’ll still have plenty of book suggestions for you whether it’s through #TNReads or our longer book reviews; we’re not taking the summer off completely!
We’ll regroup in August and figure out what we’re reading next. In the meantime, feel free to keep the discussion going within the Facebook group. Show us your favorite summer reading spot! Make us jealous of your vacation reading view! And for sure tell us if you’ve found some amazing book we absolutely have to check out.
And for now, don’t miss us too much 🙂
