B+
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Forced Proximity, Taboo Relationship/Forbidden Romance, Workplace
Archetype: Single Parent/Guardian, Teacher/Professor
I read this book in snatched moments and stolen hours and I adored it. It features tropes that I’m not all that interested in: single dad, nanny x boss, and small town romance, but the writing is so immersive and rich that these didn’t feel like familiar tropes. They felt original and fresh. Like this was the first nanny on the planet to fall in love with her boss. THAT original.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Maddie has a law degree under her belt and four years as the girlfriend of a political hopeful. She has pruned herself to fit into what her boyfriend needs her to be. Only her efforts aren’t good enough and she gets dumped by the campaign manager (partly because she is fat).
She starts afresh at Astra University (based in a small town in Missouri) as an adjunct professor and a nanny on the side. Her first night in town is her 26th birthday and she celebrates at a local dive bar where she meets Bram, a supremely tall and hot ecology professor. They have sex in the empty flat above the bar numerous times.
Only, who rings Bram’s doorbell the next day as his new nanny? Why, of course, it is Maddie. The two decide that nothing can happen, but oh, how delicious the sexual tension is. It’s filthy and I loved it. Of course, the detente doesn’t last long and soon they’re going to bone town all over the place. There is a tremendous amount of sex in this book but it is so gloriously lush in emotion and growth (ahem, apologies) that it was clearly a fulfilling part of the story. Crucial to the story even. If you remove the sex, you’d remove a big chunk of the emotional development for both parties.
Aside from all the sex, there is a great deal of growth and self-reflection that Maddie goes through. She’s been pruning herself for so long that she’s no longer sure what a Maddie shape even is. This book is about her rediscovering herself and charting a new path forward. But does that path forward include a very settled man with a full life of his own at 35?
Okay, so the dad stuff. I confess that despite being a parent myself, I usually hate reading about parents. Mostly because I find so few people can write kids well. The dialogue seems either too advanced or too simplistic or too stilted. In this book, there are three children. There’s Fern, the 17 year old who is a great kid and interesting to read about and then two six year old twins who feel real if only because dialogue is limited and constant motion is present. They’re a whirlwind in the way that only young kids can be. So for kid-parent skeptics like me, this book gets the green light.
Bram is a part of a group of friends that call themselves the Andromeda Club. They’re all such great, interesting people and I absolutely loved my time with them. The banter! The love! The snappy dressing (for some)! The injokes! Their friendship has it all.
Speaking of in-jokes. Make sure you read the footnotes present in this book. They really add to the enjoyment of the full story and if you ignore them some in-jokes won’t make sense.
For people with strong views on the third-act breakup as a trope, all is revealed in this spoiler.
Okay in the next spoiler I unpack what was revealed in the first spoiler and why it fell a bit flat for me.
It’s a pity that the slightly flat moment came at the end. They then tend to linger with me rather than get washed away by the general greatness of the book. Despite that moment of bleurgh, I heartily recommend this book to the Bitchery and I shall absolutely be reading more by this author duo.
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Wait, he’s 35 with a 17-year-old but has also managed to become a secure, settled full professor in that time?