Esme (My Tran) is a young 23-year-old Vietnamese/Caucasian blended woman who is living in poverty in Vietnam. She has nothing to lose when she travels to America to meet a random man, Khai in hopes of convincing him to marry her by the end of summer. He is handsome, intelligent, successful (but he is unable to express his feelings. Is he even capable of love?

I am Vietnamese-American, so I was intrigued to read a romance story written by a Vietnamese author. While I normally do not gravitate towards romance novels, I wanted to give the genre another try. This was pleasantly good and ended on a good note, albeit being unrealistic.
Autistic people see, hear and feel the world differently from other people. What intrigued me about this story is that I was able to view how an autistic person who has experienced traumatic events may act in a relationship. There is a notion that people with autism generally lack empathy and cannot recognize feelings but this is untrue. Autistic people are certainly capable of loving and experiencing heartbreak but their outward and inward thoughts are likely to be different.

“This is you being sad, Khai…This is how your heart breaks. It’s like you hurt too much for your brain to process, and then your body shuts down, too…” (Quan to Khai).

THIS is an essential concept to understand and accept in autism.
I absolutely adored the relationship between Khai and his older brother, Quan. There were interactions between Khai and Quan that would make me belly laugh for 5 minutes. Quan is such a wonderful big brother and he’s my FAVORITE character in the book. I actually can’t wait to read Hoang’s 3rd book which will be from Quan’s POV