Discovering Self-Love and Romance: A Book Review of 'Get a Life, Chloe Brown' by Talia Hibbert

This novel was on my list of Books by Disabled Authors. I aimed to read and share books that included disabled characters or were written by disabled authors. This list is meant to encourage readers to venture out of their comfort zones.

"Get a Life, Chloe Brown" by Talia Hibbert is an interesting read for me, there were things I did and did not like. Although, I was a bit of a harsher critic since I am also part of the disabled community.

Chloe Brown suffers from chronic illness and often suffers from extreme fatigue and pain, making her daily living challenging. Chloe loses friends and relationships because they cannot understand her struggles.

Her story begins after having a near-death experience which makes her realize she wants and needs to do more exciting things with her life. She decides to curate a list of goals that would make her life more interesting.

When I first began reading the novel I thought it would be centered around Chloe and her struggle with chronic illness, but this turned out to be a true romance novel. While Talia does mention Chloe's moments of pain, fatigue, or discouragement because of her health it is not the center of the novel. These points are touched on lightly throughout the novel.

Instead, the focus is on her list and the development of her relationship with Red. They start by completely disliking each other (no this is not an enemies to lover trope). After more interactions between the two and Chloe opening up to Red about her list their relationship becomes an exchange of services. Red helps Chloe with her list of goals and Chloe helps Red with his art website.

I found that their relationship was very well built and it gradually grew as the novel continued. It did not feel rushed or like an "insta-love" instead it was organic. My issues lie within the lack of addressing the "elephant" in the room which is Chloe's health struggles. Red never asks her about it, they never truly discuss it or what it is like navigating that together. As someone with a disability, this is one of the major discussions that comes to light when dating.

The fact that Red was this magical person who didn't question anything or care to truly understand her needs instead he just "knew" did not feel very authentic to me.

While I enjoyed the romance in the novel what fell short for me was the ways in which Talia could have highlighted Chloe's health struggles a bit more. There were a few small teaching moments like when Chloe explained the idea of "spoons", but there just wasn't enough for me. I would have liked for Talia to dive deeper into Chloe's emotions and dealing with her chronic illness, and how this affects her dating and her self-esteem.

Overall for this book review, I gave the novel ★★★★☆ (4/5) on my Goodreads because it was a good romance.

If you're interested in reading more novels like this check out my blog post "Books by Disabled Authors"

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