Book review: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Pictured edition: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, Piatkus (Little, Brown) 2019. ISBN 9780349425214. Cover design and illustration by Ashley Caswell. Image used on this blog under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968. Surrounding design made by me using Canva.

After a brush with death, Chloe Brown decides to make a list of things she needs to do to get a life… like ride a motorbike. Have a drunken night out. Travel the world with only hand luggage. Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex. And to move out of the luxe family home into her own flat. There she meets Red, the superintendent/maintenance man and artist that everyone loves, except for Chloe. He makes her feel awkward and prickly. And she has the same effect on him. They specialise in bringing out the worst in one another… until they don’t. But she has a list to be getting on with.

This is a very enjoyable adult romantic comedy, with plenty of wit and verve. Chloe is a black woman living with fibromyalgia in the UK – as is the author, Talia Hibbert – and her chronic illness and pain is treated sensitively without becoming boring or overly didactic. The supporting characters are also very well drawn. I especially liked her energetic sisters, each of whom star in the next books in the series (Take a Hint, Dani Brown and Act Your Age, Eve Brown).

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Title: Get a Life, Chloe Brown

Author: Talia Hibbert

Cover: design & illustration by Ashley Caswell

First published: Avon (Harper Collins), 2019

Length: 369 pages

ISBN: 9780349425214

Awards: a Ripped Bodice Award for Excellence in Romance Fiction, 2019

Genre: adult romance

Representation: BIPOC (main character), disabilities (main character)

Suitability: 18+

Fyi: abusive relationship (backstory), chronic pain, difficulty being believed re: pain, sex scenes

Themes: love, living with disability, trauma, abuse

Literary features/tropes: (mild) enemies to lovers, pining hero, hero in pursuit

If you like this, try: The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss by Amy Noelle Parks (PG), The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (definitely not PG)