The Kiss Quotient and Other Thoughts

I finished The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang last weekend and I still find myself thinking about the characters. I usually stay away from the romance genre because it’s not real enough for me. Romance books in general feel like it’s a woman’s fantasy. It’s not realistic or something believable that would actually happen between a couple.

The Kiss Quotient was different. I read the novel in 7 hours (within two days straight). Stella, the main character, is autistic, and the way Hoang writes Stella pulls the reader into her head. I was connected to Stella in a way that surprised me. I loved Stella on her own and I loved her unique voice. I wasn’t expecting this reaction from a romance novel I judged unfairly. Even her relationship with Michael, and the sometimes questionable ways their relationship started and flourished, felt real. If you want Fifty Shades of Grey type romance, then the description of the sex scenes are definitely for you. Even better. But, I would argue that the intimate parts of this novel are not the focus of the story.

As most of us will admit, Fifty Shades of Grey sucked in the writing department. The style of writing was dry and clunky and I couldn’t get past the first 10 pages. The story wasn’t believable to me. Those characters are on their own special planet that most of the world says, Huh? to. But with The Kiss Quotient, the writing style was beautiful and moving. It’s not even fair to compare this novel to Fifty Shades, but in terms of adult romance novels, my experience is limited due to the ugly sensation that what I’m reading is fake.

Stella allows readers to truly feel what it’s like to be disconnected from social situations. We feel her awkward moments, and how she struggles and tries her best to connect to others around her. She comes off as insensitive, but really I understand that no, she’s an extremely sensitive person and she cares. A lot. Other characters don’t notice right away that yes, she’s trying and she doesn’t want people to treat her as different. This is part of the novel that really dug at my soul. Stella doesn’t want people, specifically Michael, her love interest, to know she’s autistic because that’s when people change. They start treating her like she’s different or “walking on egg shells” when they are around her. They treat her like she’s broken, like she doesn’t understand, or that she needs to be treated differently, because eventually, the unspoken expectation is: there will be a cure.

Stella is not broken. She’s a powerful woman in a high paying job. She brings home the money at the end of the night. She’s the breadwinner. She has a gift for math and data, which makes her great at her job. She loves her work and she loves being lost in the data. What she doesn’t understand are relationships, which is how she and Michael meet in the first place.

But that’s besides the point. As a reader, I connected instantly with Stella. I may not be autistic, but I understand what it’s like to be treated differently based on labels. In the novel, Stella brings up labels a lot and eventually comes to the conclusion that yes, I’m defined this way, but that doesn’t matter. I connected with Stella because at a young age I was given a label. I have a learning disability in math. I learned math by memorizing patterns and sequences. I could complete problems once I memorized the route, but of course, my brain couldn’t make the connection for why this was the answer. I just knew it was right because I followed the pattern. Other math problems I could never get or understand no matter how hard I worked with a resource teacher or with my Mom. But why is my label called a learning disability? Is it really a disability that I see math problems differently than the rest of society?

Stella and I couldn’t be any more different on the surface. I hate numbers. She loves numbers. But we share a pretty big secret together. We both share labels that society deems as unfavorable. I know what it’s like to be treated differently or experiencing people “walking on eggshells” around me. My father to this day still harbors stigmas against me. Stella’s parents force her into social interactions as if more exposure will “fix the problem” and then she’ll eventually “just get over it,” and everything with be normal. That’s not the case. There’s not a cure for autism and there’s not a cure for learning disabilities. Both Stella and I see the world in a different way and that’s okay. That’s the moral of both stories. People are people and labels shouldn’t be used as a form of demoralizing or dehumanizing a person.

I’m part of a book club and we discussed the novel on Thursday this week. We were discussing Hoang’s Author’s Note at the end of the novel and one of the discussion questions, which was about person-first language (“person with autism") vs. identity-first language (“autistic person”). This was an awakening for me. Autistic people prefer identity-first language because that’s who they are. That’s their being. If I would say, “You are a person with autism,” that infers that there’s something wrong with them. If I would say that, I’m saying I think there will be a cure. This is problematic. Others like Jenny McCarthy have helped perpetuate this idea that autism is a disease that can be cured. There is no cure. People like Stella just are. They have important and amazing gifts, but at the same time they don’t fit in with the status quo. Why are people made to feel less about a label that is ingrained in their DNA? This code can’t be removed or edited. This is the make-up of their personality. If I would say, “This person is gay,” rather than “a gay person,” I’m inferring that being gay is a choice and not just the way someone is born. We may have labels, but that doesn’t mean we are broken. Rather, we are a gift to society. How boring would it be if we were all the same? What changes or insights would be made if there wasn’t diversity?

The Kiss Quotient may be focused a lot on Stella’s love for data and math, but I was surprised that language is just as important. This may be a book that is categorized as adult romance, but it’s so much more than that. I think everyone could learn from it, and I thank Helen Hoang for creating a mind shift in my thinking. That’s a powerful thing to be able to do in writing, and thanks to her, I am able to see the world in a different way again.