56 pages • 1 hour read
Talia HibbertHighly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute
Talia HibbertFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Talia Hibbert
Talia Hibbert is a Black British author who is known for writing diverse romances in various forms. For example, Act Your Age, Eve Brown (2021) features two protagonists on the autism spectrum, each with different experiences of autism spectrum disorder. Hibbert has spoken in interviews about her own experiences as a woman with autism. Get a Life, Chloe Brown (2019) explores chronic illness and chronic pain, paralleling Hibbert’s experience with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic condition that causes overly elastic joints and skin that bruises easily. In an essay about “chronic pain, invisible illness, and medical discrimination,” Hibbert writes about her experience seeking a diagnosis and using tattoos to reclaim ownership over her body (Hibbert, Talia. “Inking Against Invisibility.” Longreads, 2020). Her novels also focus on body diversity and explore deeper emotional issues, such as the aftermath of abuse in her 2018 The Princess Trap. Hibbert also has been diagnosed with OCD, which she credits as inspiration for the character of Brad in Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute, her first novel for young adults.
Hibbert’s catalogue features numerous LGTBQ+ characters, especially those who are in relationships that render their queerness “invisible.” In discussing her numerous novels with romances between a male and a female character wherein one or more of those characters are bisexual or pansexual, she says:
The fact is, tons of people are queer, so tons of my characters are queer, because that’s just life. Society uses fiction as a vehicle for the kind of life that interests, excites, or pleases them, and they tend to erase the things that disrupt their normative ideals” (“Interview with Talia Hibbert.” Corey’s Book Corner, 2018).
She further discusses her investment in the importance of varied representation in romance, citing her own experience with understanding her sexuality:
I’m pan […] [b]ut as a kid, before learning more about sexuality, I thought of myself as a lesbian—probably because my aunts are lesbians. I couldn’t learn via the media I was exposed to, so I relied on my only real-life example of queerness to define myself. And I was lucky to even know a loved and accepted queer couple, to have them as a model. Otherwise, I’d probably have thought there was something wrong with me (“Interview With Talia Hibbert”).
Medical Context: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) characterizes obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as “a long-lasting disorder in which a person experiences uncontrollable and recurring thoughts (obsessions), engages in repetitive behaviors (compulsions), or both. People with OCD “have time-consuming symptoms that can cause significant distress or interfere with daily life” (“Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” National Institute of Mental Health, 2018). NIMH offers examples of common obsessions (or intrusive, unwanted thoughts that often lead to anxiety), inducing fear of contamination, aggressive thoughts toward the self or others, or fear of losing control. Examples of compulsions (or the behavior someone with OCD feels the urgent need to do in response to the mental compulsions) include excessive cleaning or repeatedly checking to see that a routine task has been completed. Those with OCD generally do not derive pleasure from their compulsions but may experience a temporary alleviation of relief when performing that compulsive behavior. Experts vary on whether OCD is exclusively considered a form of mental illness—defined as any maladaptive disturbance in one’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, per the World Health Organization—or whether it should be classified as neurodiversity, which describes natural variations in brain functioning.
Media representations of OCD have been criticized for portraying those with the condition as the butt of jokes, for focusing exclusively on the compulsions performed by those with OCD (and ignoring the mental obsessions that lead to these compulsions), and for over-characterizing OCD as being indicated an intense need for cleanliness and order. The term is sometimes colloquially used to discuss anyone with a pet peeve (especially one that refers to cleanliness or order), though this usage has been increasingly perceived as dismissive of true OCD and disrespectful to those who experience true OCD.
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