Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items? • Enjoy a drunken night out. • Ride a motorcycle. • Go camping. • Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex. • Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage. • And… do something bad. But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job. Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit. But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…
This book is so good, it kinda changed my life. Well, it got me out of a horrible COVID quarantine-induced reading slump last year, which helped pull me out of an anxiety-and-depression spiral, so…it’s a pretty powerful book, imo.
In June of 2020, my husband and I had just moved across the country with our 6 cats in a rented RV, to maximize both the cats’ comfort and our ability to barely make any stops along the way.
(The move was basically unavoidable, and terrifying for pandemic AND non-pandemic reasons, plus the country was almost on fire because police won’t stop murdering Black folks.)
By the end of the month, we’d unpacked but I was still in full blown-anxiety mode, and I couldn’t relax.
Enter Chloe Brown.
I’d heard a bit about the book for months, but I’d dismissed it offhand, thinking that its representation of illness might trigger my anxieties further. I didn’t realize it was about an MC with chronic pain, not an immediately degenerative, cancer-like illness. But soon after moving, I discovered Booktube (due in part to the national protests against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd), and I heard everyone recommending this book. I realized my mistake in dismissing the book, and I added it to my library Hoopla account.
Even though I had to read it on my laptop, this book hooked me in from the beginning, and I was gone. I fell immediately in love with Chloe, whose illnesses are fundamental to her identity but in no way define or proscribe who she is or (as the premise of the book shows) what she can do. I also fell in love with Red, whose mental health journey is detailed in such surprisingly candid detail, from the PTSD aftermath of recovering from his emotionally and verbally abusive ex-girlfriend to his (related) lack of confidence in his art. I loved that the pair were, after a bit of smolder and reluctant pining, fairly forthright with each other about their past, their limitations, and their expectations. Yes, we have the requisite last-act setback (UGH), but it was done more organically (and resolved more quickly) here than in many romances.
I also loved the introduction to the entire Brown family, from Chloe’s glorious sisters to her absolute gem of a grandma Gigi, as well as Gigi’s awesome partner Shivani. I (along with half the internet, it seems) would love a prequel novel about how Gigi met Shivani!
Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, I can’t end the review without mentioning SMUDGE, the true MVP of this book. He’s an icon, and he brought the book’s couple together, truly. He also made Chloe climb a tree, despite her fibro, which made me love her even more, if that were possible. And Talia Hibbert is so talented that she was able to make this rom-com-style, unrealistic scene incredibly natural-seeming, which was no mean feat.
If you like romance, or even if you don’t but like comfy stories, read this. Read it asap.
