A contemporary romance novel starring an autistic woman, Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient had been on my radar for years, but what finally made me pick it up was that I needed something light to read during the early days of breastfeeding my daughter, when my mind would be addled and my attention spotty.

Right away, the writing bothered me. The very first paragraph goes: “I know you hate surprises, Stella. In the interests of communicating our expectations and providing you a reasonable timeline, you should know we’re ready for grandchildren.” This is an absurd way for anyone to talk, but even more ridiculous given that Stella’s mom knows full well that Stella has Asperger’s (as it was then called) and dating difficulties.

The book’s villain is even more implausibly drawn: when we first meet him, he’s “jauntily” “swinging” a box of condoms in front of her as a way of bragging about his upcoming weekend, then asks if she’s a virgin. People don’t act like that or talk that way! It’s just as implausible that Stella AND her parents actually consider him as a possible match for her (and it’s straight-up insane that she later asks him out to dinner even AFTER he has forced an unwanted kiss on her!).

I wanted to finish the book for the sake of its groundbreaking representation, so I pushed onward. The unique premise has Stella hiring an escort in order to get “training” in relationships and sex. He, like the author, is half Vietnamese, so we go on to see a lot of rare culturally correct tidbits, such as the love interest’s mother referring to herself in the third person, as indeed you do in Vietnamese. And Stella’s quite right that bún riêu looks like it contains scrambled eggs!

When I looked closely at the writing, I found countless phrasings that were elegant, faultlessly so, and yet on the macro level the prose felt thin. Is that what differentiates genre fiction (which I otherwise never read, giving me no basis for comparison) from literary fiction? The Song of Achilles, for example, also focuses on a romantic love story but feels so much richer and more gorgeous — more literary if you will. The sex scenes in The Kiss Quotient drag, whereas the consummation in The Song of Achilles will take your breath away.

I wanted to like The Kiss Quotient. But I just have so many issues with it. I don’t buy that an autistic woman, someone exquisitely sensitive to unpleasant sensations, would dress exclusively in pencil skirts and heels (when I personally can’t stand the pain of high heels!). I don’t like it when Michael calls her “my Stella,” even before they’re a real couple. I don’t like love that’s described in terms of how no one else could possibly fit or be desirable. Finally, I don’t believe that a profound self-esteem deficit could just evaporate when someone loves you. Maybe if you’re neuro-atypical, you’ll experience this book more positively?