The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang: Delightfully Sexy

3 min readJun 5, 2018

The Kiss Quotient is a delightful, sexy romance novel about Stella who has decided that she needs lessons on how to be good at sex and relationship and decides to hire an escort. What starts as a logical mission (because let us be real, her reasoning is sound) turns into a hot and steamy relationship between two adults who have their own baggage but develop genuine love and affection for each other.

Stella fucking Lane is amazing and my favourite thing about this woman is how relatable and aware she is. She is very aware of herself and who she is, so aware that it almost hinders her. The way she is presented is so understandable, you can’t help but cheer her on and feel her pain. I have found a thirty-year-old econometrician with high functioning autism more relatable than most female characters I have read about. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy them but never had I had so many moments where I found myself nodding with the thought, ‘Girl. I feel you’ as much as I did reading this book.

Michael, our wonderful male lead, is kind, he’s patient and very understanding. He is a refreshing male lead and I love him and Helen Hoang for creating him. He understands the importance of consent. He puts so much emphasis on consent regarding his actions with Stella. Do you know how sad and beautiful that is? I haven’t read romance novels in a while, but I will tell you what I remember.

It was mostly bastard male leads who I want to punch in the face. With a chair. Repeatedly.

But we are supposed to look away because borderline abusive asshole has a tragic past and is sexy. And all the awful things he did is forgiven because the love of a good woman is what he needed to grow into something that resembled a human being. *gags*

Michael is not that and I feel nothing but joy. Michael is a sweet man trying to do his best to help his family, he wants to keep his clients an arm’s length (sometimes less arm’s length and more several continents length and within good reasons) but his instant attraction to Stella makes it difficult. It doesn’t help that Stella is funny, sweet and doesn’t make him feel like a piece of brainless meat.

Helen Hoang, author of The Kiss Quotient

The sex scenes are steamy and the way these two act around each other just have me squealing at the cuteness of it all. Michael respects Stella’s limits, Stella freezes and Michael stops. Please, make note of this. Stella freezes and Michael stops. She says stop, he stops then asks her what is wrong. He is harder than a diamond, and he does not use his dick as a reason to ignore her boundaries. He doesn’t try to sweet talk her into sex. He doesn’t try to manipulate her into sex. He wants to know what went wrong and how to address it.

I will shout this from the mountain top, hitting a frying pan with a wooden spoon, “Consent is beautiful, and Helen Hoang is great! Buy her book!” Because I’m tired of female leads getting their voices drowned out because bastard male lead’s man pain and hard cock.

The Kiss Quotient is a terrific book and it has made itself my benchmark for romance novels.

Five stars out of Five stars. Would recommend.

Thank you to the publcity team at Berkley Publishing for sending us a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang: Delightfully Sexy

Written by Rebel Women Lit