Get a Life, Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert
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Genre: RomancePages: 384
My Rating: ☆☆☆☆/5
Synopsis: 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…
My Thoughts: Chloe Brown is chronically ill. She suffers from fibromyalgia and chronic pain. As a result of her illnesses, she’s become a bit of a recluse. She doesn’t want to go out with her sisters or do very much at all. In order to get her life back on track, she came up with a to do list she called the ‘Get a Life List’. On this list were things way out of her comfort zone like go camping, ride a motorcycle, have meaningless sex etc. She moved herself out of her family home and into an apartment. As a website designer, Chloe was able to work from home - so this helped a lot when she was having a bad chronic illness flare up.
In the first few chapters of the book, I really, really disliked Chloe. The superintendent of the building, Redford Morgan (Red) was just trying to be nice to her and she was a complete arse back to him. At the start of the book she comes across as being so snobby. When she lived in her family home she was used to people doing everything for her and I think she still expected this when she moved out (even though she lived on her own). I disliked Chloe’s personality so much at the start of the book that I said to myself that I’d have to abandon the book if she didn’t change her ways. Luckily, she did.
Chloe had a strange encounter with Red when she decided to rescue a cat from a tree. She managed to get herself up the tree but then her chronic illness kicked in and she couldn’t get herself back down. Red had to get Chloe and the cat out of the tree. This was a turning point for Chloe (thank goodness), and though she was reluctant to be nice to Red, she did very slowly start to evolve into a better person from this point on.
After the cat (and Chloe) rescue, Red is enlisted to help Chloe tick off some of the things from her list, starting with riding a motorcycle - something Red conveniently owns. This is done in exchange for a website for Red to list his art work on.
As the relationship between Chloe and Red develops, Chloe definitely develops as a person and at the end of the book she is actually quite a nice person!
What I liked about this book:
I loved the fact that Talia Hibbert used a protagonist with a chronic illness. This is something I’ve never seen in a book before. As someone with a chronic illness, it felt nice to know that I’m not alone with how I feel. Chronic illnesses can be very isolating and I do often feel like I’m the only person on the planet feeling the way I do, so it’s really nice to know I’m not the only one. Obviously this isn’t something that everyone can relate to, but I like how it draws awareness to chronic illnesses and symptoms that us spoonies feel on a daily basis.
What I didn’t like about this book:
This a personal preference and it didn’t affect the read in any way.. But I’d have preferred the story to have been written in first person (multiple POV) rather than third person. However, I think that Talia Hibbert did a fantastic job at expressing the emotions of both Chloe and Red using the third person.
I will also add that this book contains some intimate and sexual scenes. So if this is something you’re uncomfortable reading, then I wouldn’t recommend this book for you!
Buy Get a Life, Chloe Brown!
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