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90648AA7-C810-406C-B2AD-5DC60989AB8ADr. Owen Shaughnessy, a renowned astrophysicist, is brilliant in his field, but he suffers from poor social skills. He thinks that he’s awkward with people because he was bullied in school and teased by his siblings.

Brooke Matthews was groomed by her overbearing mother to be a model. Brooke was catty and mean in high school. Her brilliant brother committed suicide. She has left her parents’ influence and has gone to live with her widowed uncle, a colleague of Owen’s. Brooke paints pictures of the night sky, and her uncle thinks she’d make a good assistant to Owen.

This was a decent love story about an awkward guy meeting and falling for a woman he thinks is out of his league. She thinks she’s not bright enough for him and doesn’t think he’s awkward at all. It was cute and extremely G-rated. I was drawn to it because of the autistic qualities that the hero possessed (I have an autistic son). It was billed as an “opposites attract” romance, and I think that was an inaccurate label.

I do think that too much was made of Brooke having once been a “mean girl”. Everyone grows up. His family’s reaction when they met her was stupid. They were all askance thinking she was going to use Owen and hurt him based only on her physical appearance. She was too pretty (insert eye roll here) so she couldn’t want a geek like Owen.

I thought more would be made of Brooke’s controlling mother and her reaction to Owen. The mother (and father) had tried to influence every aspect of Brooke’s life, yet when they met Owen, there was nothing. No dialogue, no reaction, no comment, nothing. I thought they’d try to break things up because they hadn’t chosen him for her. Why make her parents so horrible in the past and so unnecessary to the story in the present? That made no sense to me.

I did like this book enough to download the rest of the series, and I’ve started the first one.

Goodreads rating – 4 of 5 stars