A Cozy Romance with Incredible Chronic Illness Rep

Every day, I wake up not sure what my body will have to give. Ever since I started getting symptoms of fibromyalgia in 2021, my body has had unpredictable reactions to what I do. Sometimes standing in a line for an hour will cause my shins to seize up for several days. Other times, doing laundry sends my pec muscles into a full panic. Fibro is an under-researched condition characterized by my body seeing tension where there isn’t any, resulting in chronic pain, fatigue, sleep problems, brain fog, poor temperature regulation, and more. As you might expect, after a few years of this, I started to get cautious. Maybe I shouldn’t take the stairs, because it could cause me two weeks of trouble. Every day became a negotiation between how much I’d like to push myself, and how much I estimate I can afford to.

In Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, protagonist Chloe Brown is just like me. Her fibro is much worse than mine, so she’s been even more cautious, trying to avoid flare-ups at all costs. It’s a reasonable thing to do, but when she has a near-death (sort of) experience, she starts to wonder if she’s gone too far. She wants to prove to herself that she can still be tough, independent, and brave, illness or no illness. So she makes a bucket list. Move out of her family’s house. Ride a motorcycle. Have meaningless sex. Do something bad.

When she meets the handyman of her new building, Red Morgan, a man with a motorcycle and plenty of sex appeal, she decides that he’s the man who can help her out with a whole bunch of these. And so the romance unspools. And it’s a really good romance. Cozy, without too many nonsense miscommunication twists, real and deep but still ultimately a light read.

And most importantly for me, it depicts fibromyalgia and chronic pain so well, from its funny moments to its crushing ones. Chloe’s chronic illness is unpredictable and often overwhelming, but she still gets spice and adventure, and she’s still tough as boots. She’s a plus-size protagonist with thick thighs and a hurting body, and reading her scenes made me intensely emotional. You should read this book because it’s a fun, spicy romance. But I also think you should read this book because it’s an amazing introduction to chronic illness and pain, and the kinds of things your chronically ill friends have to deal with and weigh every single day.