Saturday, April 6, 2024

Sex, Lies and Sensibility

                          

Title: Sex, Lies and Sensibility
Author: Nikki Payne
Published: Berkley, February 13, 2024
Pages: 428
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Retellings

There’s never a good time to learn you are your father’s secret child—especially not at the reading of his will. With their father’s affairs laid bare and Nora’s sensible reputation in tatters due to a viral video scandal, she and her free-spirited sister have nothing left but a rustic inn in the middle of nowhere and each other. What’s more, they need to revamp the inn before Labor Day or they lose it all. Nora hasn’t even knocked the traveling dust off last season’s designer boots when she’s confronted with three problems: 

1. She 
really should have watched more HGTV.
2. She hasn’t seen another Black person for miles.
3. A tall, dark stranger has already staked a claim on their property.

Native Abenaki eco-tour guide Ennis “Bear” Freeman has seen hapless tourists come and go. When he spots two pampered city girls at his unofficial headquarters, he expects them to catch a flight out of the inhospitable coastal Maine backwoods within a week’s time. But Nora, turns out, is made of sterner stuff. And as she rolls up her sleeves to breathe new life into the inn, she unwittingly reignites a flood of emotions inside of Bear that he had very intentionally suppressed.

Their connection is electric, their desire palpable. But Bear’s silence about his mysterious past might turn out to be the one thing that sends Nora packing.

Apparently a Nikki Payne novel review is my favorite place to reveal hard truths about myself. I have never read Sense and Sensibility. I don't even think I've seen any of the movie adaptations. Phew. It does feel good to get that off of my chest.

I do understand that one of the major themes of Sense and Sensibility is that these two people feel locked into obligations and feel like they can't follow their hearts because of that. But DANG. The slow burn of this was so slow. Once they burned though, shooo it was HOT.

I wanted to metaphysically slap both Nora and her sister upside the head for some of the baloney they put up with. I am assuming it's a holdover from the original, but dang it was frustrating. 

I could write odes to Bear. He deserves them. Especially once all of the toxic secrets were out in the open and he was just living. Best part though? Even if it did trigger Bear? Obviously the camping. You joking?! SO hot.

Ratings
Stars: 5/5
Spice: 3/5

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