BIPOC Author Spotlight Sunday: Talia Hibbert

Author: Talia Hibbert Title: Get a Life, Chloe Brown Publisher: Avon Date Published: 11/05/2019

Read Dates: 05/28/2026- 05/29/2026
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Get a Life, Chloe Brown is a dual POV opposites attract romance. Following a near death experience, compulsive listening maker and planner Chloe realizes she has allowed the management of her fibromyalgia to make her life very small. TO fix this, she makes a list of ways to challenge herself and step outside her comfort zone, beginning with moving out of her family home. At her new apartment she meets the perpetually friendly Red, handyman and building super by day, secret artist by night. Red is distrustful of the obviously wealthy and seemingly unfriendly woman who has moved in, but after a handful of negative encounters he starts paying attention. The two realize they can help each other out and strike up an unlikely friendship, but both are dealing with past baggage that make taking it further uncertain.

I can’t believe I waited so long to read this one! I really loved both characters. I liked how it showed that first impressions can be misleading and how Chloe and Red learned to trust each other. I loved Chloe’s sisters, and admired her determination to live life independently, while recognizing that there is no shame in accepting help when needed. I loved that they realized they could lean on one another, and the message about the importance of therapy. Great representation for fibromyalgia and anxiety (not specifically named as such).

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with six directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamourous family’s mansion. The next items?

• Enjoy a drunken night out.
• Ride a motorcycle.
• Go camping.
• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
• And... do something bad.

But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.

But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…