83. The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

listened to audio - borrowed from library
read by Emily Woo Zeller
Unabridged audio (10 hrs.)
2019 Berkley
296 pgs.
Adult Romance
Finished  9/1/2019
Goodreads rating: 3.98 - 27,773 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting: contemporary Vietnam, then San Jose/Palo Alto area of California

First line/s:  "Khai was supposed to be crying.  He knew he was supposed to be crying.  Everyone else was."

My comments:  This one kept me giggling and rolling my eyes.  It was ultra cute and sweet and the perfect thing to read on a long, lazy, overcast three-day-weekend Sunday.  I've got to rate it a five just for being a delightful read.  Nothing ethereal or deep, just a little bit of innocesnce, adult autism, and a young adult from a different country and culture coming to the US and knowing very little about its culture other than what they've seen in a Disney movie or two.

Goodreads synopsis:  Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.
          As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection.
          With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love.

3. Counting by 7s - Holly Goldberg Sloan

2013 Dial Books for Young Readers

380 pgs.

Tweens CRF

Finished 1/10/15

Goodreads rating: 4.15

My rating:    (5) Awesome  (I wanted more!)
TPPL

Contemporary Bakersfield, CA

1st sentence/s:  "We sit together outside the Fosters Freeze at a sea-green metal picnic table.  All four of us.  We east soft ice cream, which has been plunged into a vat of liquid chocolate (that then hardens into a crispy shell)."

My comments:  'kay....I loved this story.  It was brilliant.  Willow, the 12-year-old genius and her collection of people that ultimately made up her family - priceless! I want to read on and on and on, want more, more, more.  A definite feel-good book for older kids AND adults!

Becky's review from Becky's Book Reviews

Goodreads book summary:  In the tradition of Out of My Mind, Wonder, and Mockingbird, this is an intensely moving middle grade novel about being an outsider, coping with loss, and discovering the true meaning of family. 
     Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life... until now.
     Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. Her journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to read.