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A review by lizshayne
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
As someone still venturing out of historical romance into the wild waters of contemporary (I mean I have contemporary romances on here, just very few by authors I didn't get into through their historical stuff) and who still struggles with the style*, this one was a lot of fun.
Hibbert, at least in my read, does a really good job with writing a disabled heroine and all the ways in which she has to think, constantly, about moving through the world with a disability.
And I love that Hibbert wrote a story about a Black heroine without making the story be about race or racism. Chloe's life is not easy, but that's not because of her race and I want more books where characters can be diverse without making the story into a Very Special Episode. Hibbert has that down.
She also has that british romance writer's flair for absurd but not impossible secondary characters who are not quite ridiculous enough to be unbelievable, but just ridiculous enough to be...an accurate sketch of friendships if the sketch was sketch comedy.
One of the things that is difficult about the romance novel is that the genre often develops conflict out of the "mess up and apologize" dynamic (also known as sin and repentance) which, like, so does Tanakh, it makes a lot of sense.
But it's also an odd line to walk because you need to move through this part quickly, but you can't do so by making it trivial because then the member of the couple who overreacts looks like a turd and you don't want the character you are rooting for to end up with a turd. Which is why triggers and trauma provide a neat solution, but then you also need a resolution in a reasonable amount of time so it has to be traumatic enough for a third act breakup, but...then you also need the epiphany that allows the characters to break out of trauma responses to be relatively quick as well.
It's a tough line to walk and I think that the upshot is that romance novels rarely offer enough time for healing.
Which is FINE, they're novels, not documentaries. But also romance is one of the few genres that is deeply invested in poetry (so to speak) as dulce et utile; that which delights and instructs. Romance novels tell us how to be. This novel instructs, in its own way, what being a supportive partner to a disabled person looks like, what coming to terms with disability looks like, what rebuilding community looks like, and what pleasure feels like.
(I have a theory that, when romance novels don't land, it's because the lesson they are imparting—intentionally or not—is not one I believe is worth learning.)
But because the romance novel is seen as both fantasy and instruction, the question of how to disentangle the two inevitably arises. And it feels like recovery is presented as instruction when, if only for reasons of compression of time, it ought to be treated as fantasy. Or that it is instruction, but the things that allow recovery to happen on that time scale vary.
IDK, there's still a lot to unpack, but I think that reading romance novels predominantly as instructions for living, with fantasy doing little more than compressing timelines provides an interesting lens through which to look at the genre's evolution in the last 5-10 years. (Not to mention the ongoing instructions in masculinity that pervade the genre, but are rarely read by men.)
———
*Look, some of us are literarily anywhere but here and I recognize that does make things a bit tricky when reading something in the here and now.
Hibbert, at least in my read, does a really good job with writing a disabled heroine and all the ways in which she has to think, constantly, about moving through the world with a disability.
And I love that Hibbert wrote a story about a Black heroine without making the story be about race or racism. Chloe's life is not easy, but that's not because of her race and I want more books where characters can be diverse without making the story into a Very Special Episode. Hibbert has that down.
She also has that british romance writer's flair for absurd but not impossible secondary characters who are not quite ridiculous enough to be unbelievable, but just ridiculous enough to be...an accurate sketch of friendships if the sketch was sketch comedy.
One of the things that is difficult about the romance novel is that the genre often develops conflict out of the "mess up and apologize" dynamic (also known as sin and repentance) which, like, so does Tanakh, it makes a lot of sense.
But it's also an odd line to walk because you need to move through this part quickly, but you can't do so by making it trivial because then the member of the couple who overreacts looks like a turd and you don't want the character you are rooting for to end up with a turd. Which is why triggers and trauma provide a neat solution, but then you also need a resolution in a reasonable amount of time so it has to be traumatic enough for a third act breakup, but...then you also need the epiphany that allows the characters to break out of trauma responses to be relatively quick as well.
It's a tough line to walk and I think that the upshot is that romance novels rarely offer enough time for healing.
Which is FINE, they're novels, not documentaries. But also romance is one of the few genres that is deeply invested in poetry (so to speak) as dulce et utile; that which delights and instructs. Romance novels tell us how to be. This novel instructs, in its own way, what being a supportive partner to a disabled person looks like, what coming to terms with disability looks like, what rebuilding community looks like, and what pleasure feels like.
(I have a theory that, when romance novels don't land, it's because the lesson they are imparting—intentionally or not—is not one I believe is worth learning.)
But because the romance novel is seen as both fantasy and instruction, the question of how to disentangle the two inevitably arises. And it feels like recovery is presented as instruction when, if only for reasons of compression of time, it ought to be treated as fantasy. Or that it is instruction, but the things that allow recovery to happen on that time scale vary.
IDK, there's still a lot to unpack, but I think that reading romance novels predominantly as instructions for living, with fantasy doing little more than compressing timelines provides an interesting lens through which to look at the genre's evolution in the last 5-10 years. (Not to mention the ongoing instructions in masculinity that pervade the genre, but are rarely read by men.)
———
*Look, some of us are literarily anywhere but here and I recognize that does make things a bit tricky when reading something in the here and now.