Book Review: Get a Life, Chloe Brown

“What did it mean, when a man you made deals with and sent slightly flirtatious emails to licked your ear and held your hand?”

Get a Life, Chloe Brown
Talia Hibbert

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and it’s my first read of 2021! I think and hope I’m off to a much better start than 2020, so fingers crossed I keep the momentum going! I will also wholly admit, I stumbled across this book because I wanted something light, happy, and romantic and my library’s Overdrive found this for me. I had actually borrowed it once before, but never found the energy to start reading. I’m glad I borrowed it again, because Talia Hibbert came to my rescue with all the beautiful prose and steam a girl could want on a bleak January day.

“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…”

Goodreads

Chloe Brown is a wonderful protagonist, she has a personality wholly her own. I am absolutely loving the current trend of non-shell characters in contemporary romance. I cannot speak to the authenticity of her as disabled character, but in my cursory knowledge of avoiding inspiration porn, Get a Life, Chloe Brown does not position Chloe to be extraordinary or exemplary due to her chronic illness. Her witty back and forth repartees with Red, her love interest, develop organically through some creative plot writing.

The chemistry between Chloe and Red is wonderful, and they both have their baggage. There is a TW at the beginning of the book for describing an abusive relationship, and the fall out from that relationship is written very well. Chloe and Red, both people who are whole on their own, but better together, are also written relateably and compassionately. Their ability to own their baggage, and have to deal with it from time to time, is entirely plausible despite some dramatic scenarios making them face their stuff.

Red is, for a ginger, still a rather attractive love interest. As a ginger, I’m just not into red headed men. Never have been, much to my (very nosy) dental hygienist’s dismay when she discovered I had no intention of finding a red headed man to procreate with since “my kind” are apparently dying out. Hibbert mentions a lot that he’s a big guy without going into specifics of height or if it’s his actual body type.

Chloe is Black and Disabled, but I still didn’t get a firm idea of what she looked like in terms of body type beyond the cover image. It was one of the few details it felt like Hibbert left out for both characters, now that I reflect on it, and I found it entirely allowable. There really aren’t a lot of chonky romance protagonists, and the romance element was less about their bodies than them as falling in love as whole people. In my head, Chloe is now similarly shaped to me, and Red is big and buff like an artsy ginger barbarian. He didn’t get as much leeway with how his form was described, and while there are hints at musculature, the door was left open for how ripped one wanted to imagine Red.

Their romance had me laughing out loud, even crying once or twice. I found quotable lines that spoke to parts of me in the book, but didn’t find them all as profound as what I typically highlight in Alyssa Cole’s work. I also can’t help that Cole is my standard for romance novels now anyways, but Hibbert absolutely delivered on an engaging and healthy romance with wonderfully steamy scenes sprinkled throughout deepening emotional attachment.

Chloe and Red falling in love didn’t feel forced in the slightest, and the dynamic Chloe has with her family was incredibly written. I am looking forward to starting the next book in the Brown Sisters series, Take a Hint, Dani Brown as it follows the openly bi/pan sister of the tight knit trio. I have high hopes, and have been let down by so many second books in the past, I still can’t help but cheer Hibbert on and look forward to loading it onto my e-reader.

One of my favorite things that I hope continues in the next book is Hibbert’s absolutely unique and lush way with words; she truly uses them in a way that is both abstract and evocative without coming off as purple prose in any way. I found myself grinning as I read lines like “she dissolved like sugar in tea”– perfectly succinct and unique, and fitting for the scenes they are written in. There was a vast catalog of color used in Get a Life, Chloe Brown, and I’m intrigued to find out if that was because Red was an artist, or if that’s actually Hibbert’s writing style. I look forward to seeing her develop more catalogs of imagery in her next works.

I hope more people pick up this wonderful series, as the second one just came out and there is a third on the way! It is happy, a little sappy, and certified steamy.

Happy 2021, and happy reading!