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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re thrilled to share a conversation digging into another of our favorite romance reads – Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle.

Described by the author as “part memoir”, it’s a swoony, unflinching, and truthful romance that digs into some complex and hard things - autistic diagnosis and burnout, caregiving, family pressures, and mental health struggles. And we’re absolutely here for it!

But it’s also a lot of fun, has great banter, and leans into some of life’s more delightful moments. Like:

• Getting to know someone who you may have made assumptions about at first and being surprised by what you find

• Finding kinship with someone and learning you love some of the same things

• Creating a safe space where you can authentically be yourself and having someone there who really sees you

• Getting comfortable with using your voice to ask for what you need and want

This book is the third in a series of romances featuring neurodiverse characters that feel like they build on each other and read almost as a trilogy. We first meet the male love interest Kwan as a featured secondary character in The Kiss Quotient and then again in The Bride Test. In these stories, he looks intimidating, but is charming, confident, kind, and often serves as the voice of reason. This gives us a depth of understanding of his character, so that in this last book when he’s in a different and more vulnerable place we already have a foundation for who he’s been in the past and can really dig in with him in the present.

There are several risks we felt Helen Hoang took that we feel really paid off. They are:

• Starting this book with a several year time jump from the last book

• Switching from third person to first person for book 3

• Choosing to have this book to play out over a longer timeframe than most romance stories (many months)

Towards the end of the conversation, we talk about how this story doesn’t feel like it tells lies. It gives time for the complex issues under discussion to really be shown, progress authentically, and for a poignant and satisfactory ending to be earned. We also discuss some of our own personal intersections with this story and how the way she approached telling this nuanced and deep story really allowed us to resonate with the experiences and emotions of the characters.

We’d highly recommend this book and hope you enjoy this episode.

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Names are important. Towards the beginning of this conversation we talk about how to pronounce Helen Hoang’s last name. We were close, but a little off. The phonetic spelling of Hoang is HHWae-NG.

The Verbivore references several details from author Helen Hoang’s author’s note and acknowledgements that were included in the back of her paperback edition.

Fable references a series that we did on Fable and the Verbivore about writing Romantic Chemistry and another on Physical Intimacy taken from a behavioral psychology perspective. Here are those episodes:

• Episode 15: How to write great romantic chemistry

• Episode 16: Writing romantic chemistry part 2

• Episode 71: Let's talk about writing physical intimacy

• Episode 72: Let's talk about writing physical intimacy (part 2)

Books and Movies Mentioned:

• The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

• The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

• The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

• Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)