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A review by chloe_liese
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
5.0
“She’d been right about her plan, about her list: the process of completing each task involved in multiple adjustments in attitude and countless bite-sized moments of bravery, and those would all add up. By the time she finished, she’d have more than checkmarks and a few stories to tell.
She’d have a life.”
Chloe sets off to improve her quality of life thinking it requires external circumstances to do so—drunken debauchery, empty sex, “reckless” activities like camping in the wild and riding a motorbike—but what she learns is that her capacity for higher quality of life always lay within her heart, not her frustrating body.
Chloe learns that truth by being loved well, by being desired and accepted and enjoyed for who she is. Get a Life Chloe Brown is much more than a romance—though it very much is that, and a hot one, to boot—it’s a story of healing from trauma, finding optimism amidst the natural inclination for despair amidst chronic illness and pain, of opening yourself to the risk and reward of living life from a place of gratitude, not fear.
Both Chloe and Red have to face past pain and fear within themselves, in order to try for a relationship. They have to take that leap into love, knowing that loving someone means they can hurt you, but the person you give yourself to is the one person you trust to do their best not to cause you pain, the person you’re safe with and loved and known for who you are. This is a beautifully inclusive romance that represents chronic illness, a man as a victim of emotional abuse (so rare), and a beautiful Black woman who has curves and snark and a fantastic witty mind. If you read one contemporary romantic comedy this year, please make this it.
“She was the woman who’d come here to ask about love.
She was the woman who’d decided to change her entire life with nothing but a list.
She was the woman who survived, every single day.
She was Chloe fucking Brown, and she was starting to wonder if she’d been brave from the beginning. If she’d just needed to love herself enough to realize it.
She supposed, as the knowledge dawned in her like a sunrise, that she must love herself right now. And it felt good.”
She’d have a life.”
Chloe sets off to improve her quality of life thinking it requires external circumstances to do so—drunken debauchery, empty sex, “reckless” activities like camping in the wild and riding a motorbike—but what she learns is that her capacity for higher quality of life always lay within her heart, not her frustrating body.
Chloe learns that truth by being loved well, by being desired and accepted and enjoyed for who she is. Get a Life Chloe Brown is much more than a romance—though it very much is that, and a hot one, to boot—it’s a story of healing from trauma, finding optimism amidst the natural inclination for despair amidst chronic illness and pain, of opening yourself to the risk and reward of living life from a place of gratitude, not fear.
Both Chloe and Red have to face past pain and fear within themselves, in order to try for a relationship. They have to take that leap into love, knowing that loving someone means they can hurt you, but the person you give yourself to is the one person you trust to do their best not to cause you pain, the person you’re safe with and loved and known for who you are. This is a beautifully inclusive romance that represents chronic illness, a man as a victim of emotional abuse (so rare), and a beautiful Black woman who has curves and snark and a fantastic witty mind. If you read one contemporary romantic comedy this year, please make this it.
“She was the woman who’d come here to ask about love.
She was the woman who’d decided to change her entire life with nothing but a list.
She was the woman who survived, every single day.
She was Chloe fucking Brown, and she was starting to wonder if she’d been brave from the beginning. If she’d just needed to love herself enough to realize it.
She supposed, as the knowledge dawned in her like a sunrise, that she must love herself right now. And it felt good.”