Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (Avon Books 2019)

Reviewed by Katie Centabar

Time for another feature by your friend who always has great romance recommendations that are somehow never smutty and always nuanced! In these tough times, we all need love (*insert a cliche here about how necessary love and romance is – especially now*). But really, it is and we do. 

In Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, our titular protagonist survives a near-death experience, imagines her own depressing obituary, and decides that it’s time that she “get a life”! (Disclaimer: I can really relate. Minus any dramatic inspiration, I have asked my writer best friend to pen my obituary so I can read all the wonderful things she would say about me. Anyway, not about me, moving on.)  Chloe, like all good Virgos, starts a list of all the things she wants to do. Her life will be complete once she: 1) enjoys a drunken night out, 2) rides a motorcycle, 3)  goes camping, 4) has meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex, 5) travels the world with nothing but hand luggage and 6) does something bad. 

As the story unfolds from two perspectives — Chloe’s, and her building’s handsome, damaged super Red — we see a love story of two people with real problems. Chloe hides chronic pain with sarcasm, Red has gone underground from his previous life to avoid the fallout from an abusive relationship. Their relationship is one of the most generous and compassionate explorations of love, complicated by experience. In too many romance novels, I find myself scoffing at the nearly perfect lives of characters who always have the right clothes, always know what to say. Chloe and Red are messy in a way that feels real and familiar, making their journey even more refreshing and rewarding. Plus, the sex was sexy.  

For fans of Jasmine Guillory, Get A Life Chloe Brown is another jewel in the crown of the modern romance genre. I finished the book in one day, and would recommend it for anyone who would benefit from a little raunch and skin tingling fun.   

---

Buy this book: Bookshop.org