Review: Talia Hibbert – Act Your Age, Eve Brown

The Brown Sisters series by Talia Hibbert is my absolute favourite romance series, so I was so excited that I got to read the third installment, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, early! Especially because I’m autistic and the author confirmed that both the main character and the love interest in this book are autistic.

This book comes out on March 9th 2021, and I suggest preordering a copy from Blackwell’s (free international shipping) here!

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Goodreads Synopsis

In Act Your Age, Eve Brown the flightiest Brown sister crashes into the life of an uptight B&B owner and has him falling hard—literally.

Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong—so she’s given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It’s time for Eve to grow up and prove herself—even though she’s not entirely sure how…

Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner’s on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry—and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he tells her the brutal truth: not a chance in hell. Then she hits him with her car—supposedly by accident. Yeah, right.

Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Before long, she’s infiltrated his work, his kitchen—and his spare bedroom. Jacob hates everything about it. Or rather, he should. Sunny, chaotic Eve is his natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else. Like Eve, the heat between them is impossible to ignore—and it’s melting Jacob’s frosty exterior.

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Review

The autistic rep in this book is so special. I’ve only seen a book where both the main character and the love interest are autistic once before, and never in trad pub. It was amazing to see how this worked.

Both of them were still very different, despite both being autistic. Because like they say: “If you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person.” They have different traits, different struggles, different coping mechanisms. But they also very clearly recognize something in each other which makes them have an easier time being around each other than they would have with most neurotypical people. It was especially good to see two very different experiences: one of someone who’s known he’s autistic since he was a kid. And one from someone who’s just starting to ask herself if she might be autistic too.

I have to admit I enjoyed the book less than the previous two overall, though. I still really liked it – I loved the characters and the setting – but I had some issues with the development of the story. One thing that made me enjoy this less is how Eve’s parents were really nasty to her at the start of the book, even going as far as calling her a waste of space. This was never really resolved, and I think that was a shame, especially since it reeks of anti-autistic ableism.