Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

So I actually didn’t even know that I’d be able to put Get A Life, Chloe Brown in a book bingo square. I put a hold on it because it kept coming up in “I’m thinking about exploring the romance genre but don’t know where to start” lists and such, and then it became available smack in the middle of book bingo, and I started reading it completely unaware that the main character Chloe has a chronic illness. So that was a nice bonus!

I was going to write some personal vulnerable stuff about how I as an American man still feel the weird stigma that I osmotically picked up about romance novels from the culture in general and so it feels unnecessarily, irrationally uncomfortable to be like “I read this sexy romance novel and thought it was good!”

But, I don’t know, my heart’s not really in it right now, so: I thought this sexy romance novel was good. As a guy who’s going to therapy, the most charming thing about it to me personally was when the male love interest Red has a therapy appointment (off-“camera,” even though he’s a POV character for some of the book) and then confronts Chloe about something he’s angry about. It’s obvious, in the ensuing conversation, that he’s employing a technique that he learned in therapy, in kind of an awkward “I can’t believe I’m doing this” way. Chloe is bemused but rolls with it, but it just rang very true to me as a guy who’s spent a lot of time kind of regarding his own emotions as suspect or being unwilling or flat out unable to acknowledge them. A romance novel is a fantasy in a lot of ways, but little touches of realness like this do make the characters come alive and this one was deftly rendered.

Chloe’s chronic illness was less personally relatable to me, but its portrayal here was similarly nuanced. In addition to being fantasies, romance novels seem all about the characters. Talia Hibbert really makes hers come alive. I think the big emotions lead to some prose that occasionally tips into being a bit too overwrought for my taste, and the eleventh-hour conflict feels like a bit more of a regression for Red than I think is warranted at that point in his relationship with Chloe. But these are quibbles that don’t keep this from being a book I’d recommend to anyone looking to tip their toe into the romance novel waters.