The Bride Test

Helen Hoang's The Bride Test, published in 2019, centres on Khai Diep, who does not believe he feels things the way other people do. He feels irritation when someone moves his belongings and satisfaction when a ledger balances to the penny, but not grief and not love, and he has concluded that he is defective. His family knows better: they understand that his autism means he processes emotions differently, and when he keeps clear of relationships altogether, his mother flies to Vietnam to look for a wife for him.

Esme Tran is a resourceful young mixed-race woman who cleans rooms at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City and grew up there in one of its poorer districts. A wealthy Vietnamese-American woman approaches her with an unusual opportunity: to travel to the United States for the summer, live with her son, Khai, and explore whether a marriage might follow. Esme takes it, and arrives to persuade a man who does not want persuading, finding her way through cultural expectations, American norms and her own insecurities along the way.

The Bride Test is a companion novel to Hoang's earlier book The Kiss Quotient; Khai is the autistic cousin of Michael, the male lead of that novel.