Review: Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert
Synopsis:
Eve Brown is a certified 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 is 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.
Excuse me while I quietly weep because this series is over.
“I told you before, that there are different ways to fail. Imperfection is inevitable. That’s life. But it doesn’t sound to me like you failed at all, Eve. It sounds like your dream broke, and you’ve been picking up shattered pieces, and blaming yourself when your hands bleed.”
This was probably my most anticipated release of 2021. And it definitely exceeded all my expectations. (Also, look at how cute and colorful that flipping cover is! I’m obsessed.)
The entire Brown clan is delightfully chaotic and very weird, but Eve is the black sheep of the family. She’s constantly falling into new jobs and dropping them. Her two older sisters are successful, ambitious, and very smart, and Eve is constantly comparing herself to them, and feeling like a failure for falling short. Not only that, she’s at a loss of what she wants to do with her life.
Wow, do I relate. I’m 27 years old, unemployed—though that’s because of the pandemic—and up until very recently, I felt like my life was going absolutely nowhere. Reading about someone who is going through the exact same thing made me feel less alone, and just seen.
There is a reason why Talia Hibbert is one of my favorite authors. She writes about subjects like autism and mental health with such care and understanding. She really does a good job of showing there isn’t one way to have autism. I’ve said before, I have ADHD. Like autism, ADHD is classed as a neurodevelopmental disorder. (This is a fancy way of saying that your brain is just wired differently.) The way Hibbert writes about characters struggling to fit in with neurotypical people is so poignant, and really resonated with me.
“She’d never been in this situation, the kind where you met new people with the aim of making friends, yet didn’t experience the crushing weight of self-consciousness. With everyone except her sisters, she felt a slight pressure to perform, to hide away the most annoying parts of herself in order to be liked.”
Boom. She gets it.
I loved Jacob. Besides The Bride Test by Helen Hoang—which is fantastic—I’ve never read a book where the male lead is on the spectrum. The fact that he has autism is not the main focus of the book. It’s merely a part of him. While Jacob is orderly, controlled, and more than a little grouchy, he is still a likeable, relatable character. Usually the more straight-laced characters are hard to like, but of course, Hibbert is a master at writing characters.
Like Dani and Zaf, Eve and Jacob are very different people. They clash with each other at first—and the banter that ensues is amazing. But the more they learn about the other, the more understanding and empathy they have. I absolutely adore how supportive and caring he was with Eve.
“Your abilities lie in the places people usually overlook, so you’ve been convinced you don’t have any at all. But you’re smart, and you’re capable, and if people struggle to see that, it’s their problem, not yours.”
And again, while they both have a lot of baggage, they try to deal with it so it won’t seep into their relationship. I will never stop talking about how much I love these books for showing healthy relationships.
TW: mentions childhood neglect, and anti-autistic ableism.
This book is an open-door romance, meaning the sex scenes are explicit.