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Fans of angsty romance will be delighted with The Heart Principle, the third book in Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient series. While this book – and therefore this review – does contain spoilers for the first two novels, you do not have to read those to enjoy this story.
Quan Diep, older brother to the hero (Khai) from The Bride Test and cousin and best friend to the hero (Michael) from The Kiss Quotient, has beaten his testicular cancer but not without some permanent scars, both physical and emotional. One of the hurdles on his way back to normal is dating, something he used to take great joy in but hasn’t done in years. He’s not ready to get back into the full-blown girlfriend/boyfriend thing but on Michael’s advice, he decides to pick someone from a dating app to hook up with.
Violinist Anna Sun is on a leave of absence from her job. A YouTube video shot her to unanticipated fame and the result has been an incapacitating neurosis which has her caught between fan expectations and her own perceived inability to meet them. Naturally, this is the perfect moment for her longtime boyfriend Julian to announce he wants an open relationship. An understandably angry Anna warns him that if he dates others, she will too. He smirks confidently at her and says :
“I don’t think you’ll sleep with someone else. I know you, Anna. . . You don’t like sex.”
But Anna is resolved and places her photo on a dating app, with the tag,
“Looking to spend an uncomplicated evening with someone nice. Just one night, please.”
After scrolling through numerous non-starters for his own one-night stand, Quan comes across Anna’s profile. He likes her directness and the no-strings attached nature of what she is looking for and messages her. She responds immediately but the encounter isn’t what he expected. They end up watching the end of a documentary together via text, bonding over the sweetness of the film before deciding to meet up the next night.
Anna arrives at the agreed upon restaurant but when she sees Quan get off his motorcycle she panics, races to the bathroom and spends half an hour in a stall ignoring the many texts he sends. Once her phone goes silent, she risks sneaking out but of course runs into him in the hall as he heads to the men’s room. Anna apologizes before once more running away, but when Quan reaches out to check up on her, she responds. They wind up syncing their videos and texting as they watch another documentary and thus their relationship is launched.
I felt that, compared to the other two novels in the series, this story got off to the most romantic start. Somehow, Quan and Anna turn meeting through a dating app into a meet cute that is absolutely amazing. Equally charming is the arc taken by their love story. Quan is astonishingly patient with the skittish, painfully shy and awkward Anna. They never wind up having that one-night stand because Anna can’t bring herself to do it, and Quan delightfully works on building an emotional relationship with her before moving on to the physical. As in The Kiss Quotient, the hero’s patience and kindness make a huge difference to the heroine’s attitude towards sex. Anna blossoms due to Quan’s ability to dole out physical intimacy in a slow, measured manner that both lets her process her responses and gives her time to enjoy the experiences. I loved that their emotional and physical connections were in lock step, advancing together.
While the other two stories have some serious threads running through them, The Heart Principle is understandably the most poignant of the series. Quan is dealing with the aftermath of his illness, not just the physical changes to his body but the impact that will have on his future romantic relationships.
Anna’s plate is overflowing with trauma. Her neurosis/anxiety regarding her playing has essentially stripped her of her ability to work and taken away something she used to enjoy. Her family situation is difficult because her mother never wanted Anna to pursue a career in music, making it a point to tell her how impractical that was and how Anna’s inability to master any other skills left her vulnerable to being a complete failure. Her older sister Priscilla is controlling and manipulative, so she has no one to turn to for support among her relatives. Anna also feels like a fish out of water; she spends all her time trying to read other people and do whatever pleases them and feeling like she never gets it quite right. When her therapist diagnoses her with autism about halfway through the story, it is actually a relief for Anna to finally have a name for what has made her feel like an outsider her whole life.
All of that would have been enough for Quan and Anna to work through, but the last half of the book ups the angst factor considerably by having a family tragedy occur and forcing Anna to return to her parents’ home to be a caregiver to a close relation. Being there places Anna in constant proximity to her mom and Priscilla, the latter of whom makes it clear that Anna is far less than she should be – less smart, less capable, less strong. While Quan is everything that one could have hoped for in that situation – loving, supportive, unbelievably kind and caring – Anna gets buried in an avalanche of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion by the demands of caregiving under the hyper-critical eye of her family. It leads her – and those of us going through it with her – to a very grim place.
Naturally it puts a strain on the romance. Not just the fact that Anna is going through so much and Quan is trying to provide long distance (several hours away) support, but the fact that Anna’s family starts pushing him into ‘fling’ status and tries to force Anna to take back Julian. All told, this thirty percent or so of the book is super intense. And frankly, it lasts too long. Anna and Quan’s love story is nearly swallowed whole by Anna’s journey through some incredibly difficult, depressing life situations.
I’ve encountered this before in romance novels. Some authors seem to feel as though their couples have to earn an HEA by going through fire together and this book certainly does that. It feels somewhat incongruous that the sweet romance at the beginning and the lovely one at the end goes through such a difficult middle portion, but the author does a great job of tying her tale together. The length of Anna and Quan’s trial by fire is a bit too extended, but it does showcase that they are genuinely, deeply in love and will absolutely be able to survive any future tests to their relationship life throws at them.
Overt extended trauma aside, I enjoyed The Heart Principle. It’s deeper, darker and more serious than the first two books in the series at times, but readers who can take some pain with their pleasure will find a lot to love here.
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 18/09/21
Publication Date: 08/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I've been an avid reader since 2nd grade and discovered romance when my cousin lent me Lord of La Pampa by Kay Thorpe in 7th grade. I currently read approximately 150 books a year, comprised of a mix of Young Adult, romance, mystery, women's fiction, and science fiction/fantasy.
Related Reviews
What is the trope of this book?
I’m not sure this book falls into any particular or common romance “trope”. Maggie’s review contains a pretty good summary of the book’s set up, without giving too much away. Is there something in particular you need to know before giving it a try?
This is my favorite romance of the year so far! So good!!
It’s definitely a good one. I’m so glad I got the chance to review it.
Excited to read this one!
Hope you enjoy it!
Hmmm . . . so my comment was one of the ones lost. I’ll do my best to recreate it?
Maggie, great review!
I posted elsewhere re: covers and marketing that I enjoyed this book and I’m still thinking about more than a week later (a pretty good indicator that the book is different from so many others in the genre). I like books in which the principal characters have more going on than just silently (or openly) lusting after one another, page after page. So bring on the angst, and other characters, and “stuff” in our protagonists lives. Those things make the books interesting and memorable for me.
Also, a shout out to this author for her points of view about sex. We not only need more diversity in characters and cultures presented, we need diversity in the ways in which characters experience physical intimacy. I’m not talking about swinging from the chandeliers or even more explicit details – we have erotica for that. I’m looking for acknowledgement that the very tired, stereotypical progression (kisses, fondling, oral, missionary penetration) with characters so on the verge that everyone orgasms simultaneously and within minutes – is just as written: fiction for a lot of people. Not everyone – in fact, what we’re coming to learn is that many people – need and want something different. We need characters who talk about that with considerate partners who enjoy providing whatever that is.
Unfortunately it was – and so was my response. I think it went something like… Queer romance is doing a much better job of presenting characters of different sexual orientation – not just homosexual or bisexual, but I’ve read several books featuring demi, ace and trans characters in the m/m genre alone, and I know there are many more out there. I don’t read much contemporary m/f romance anyway, but from what I see here and other places, the vast majority of it is firmly M.F. and nothing else. And that’s fine – I suspect that’s what most readers of the genre expect and want anyway. But it does leave a certain proportion of those who identify as heterosexual (but also ace, demi, aro etc). under-represented.
My reply was lost, too! Thank you, glad you liked the review and the book. I also appreciated that the author actually tackles the serious subjects she brings up in the story and doesn’t just use them as short hand for “characters have gone/are going through stuff”. Too often in romance serious issues are brought up and then simply become background stuff although in real life they would take up the h/h whole world. I read a book once where the mom took time off from searching for a child she had JUST LOST to fall in love. No way that happens in real life.
What I appreciated about the intimacy was that another trick used by romance authors is to turn the heroine instantly orgasmic with the right guy. That becomes part of their shorthand for “it’s twue wuve”. I’m extremely grateful that Hoang had her characters work through their issues surrounding this and showed that sometimes intimacy takes some work, and some embarrassing conversations.
I once criticized Anne Stuart for having her heroines routinely come on the first thrust despite having struggled with sex. She replied that it could happen. I was abashed–it was Anne Freaking Stuart–but it still irritates me. It’s just not how most women work let alone those who’ve had any sexual disfunction.
Well sure, it could happen – but I could spot a unicorn later today, too. That’s just how possibility works. I prefer probabilities – not could it ever in the universe happen but is it probable that it will. And the answer to that in this case is a definitive no. Also, I just don’t like where that thought process takes us – it excuses every guy who makes no effort because sex becomes alchemy where it is the right combination that is the solution as opposed to a skilled practitioner. I think a lot of people like that trope, though. At least I assume so based on how often being with “the one” makes sex great or even cures infertility in romance novels.
Sounds a bit circular:
we suppose that the descriptions of sex in romance are what readers like because this is what they get.
Maybe a lot of people are worrying that they either are wrong or do it wrong? But do not raise the issue because they would have to admit that they do not have the described sex , or do not like it that way (I would hate oral sex as the first sex with a new man), or do not insta-orgasm?
A lot of people here complain about those sex scenes, or skim, maybe a lot of people reading romance in general feel like that?
Sorry, this is off topic, please move or delete if it should be elsewhere.
Online romance readers actually represent a small segment of the market and publishers respond to sales more than they do twitter/website chatter so I’m not sure what would more accurately relay what most of us want – what we buy or what we say online about what we buy/want. :-) It’s a conundrum and a puzzle for sure.