Book Review

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Aww you guys – here’s another romance with a set up that is so catnippy that you’ll one-click by the end of this paragraph. Rafe is a contemporary romance about a divorced Black surgeon who needs a nanny on short notice for her twin six year old daughters. Enter Rafe, a professional nanny who has worked for several families and has glowing references. He’s also tall, covered with tattoos, ginger, bearded, and rides a motorcycle. He describes himself as “calm and gentle and not about the bullshit.” Be still, my heart.

Our story begins when Sloan, a surgeon, comes home and discovers that her nanny quit in the middle of the day. Sloan has to find a new nanny and Rafe is an experienced nanny who just finished his employment with a family who moved out of the country (they wanted him to come with them, but he declined). His references are great, the twins like him, he cooks, he’s responsible, and the only thing that worries both Sloan and Rafe is that they are immediately attracted to each other, which they realize could cause all kinds of complications.

I struggled a little bit with the employer/employee aspect and then just decided to roll with it. Given the amount of harassment and power imbalance in workplace situations, I avoid employer/employee romances, but this book handled the situation as well as possible. Rafe and Sloan are very direct and honest with each other about the situation. They both seem clear with themselves and with each other that Rafe’s continued employment is not at stake regardless of what happens sexually or romantically. I loved how they communicated about sex and relationships in a low key, no pressure way but with just a bit of self-conscious awkwardness.

The description includes the following note:

This stand-alone romance is fluffy. So fluffy. It’s fluff. Low. Angst. Fluff. Featuring a large tatted, motorcycle riding ginger man, who bakes a mean bacon quiche and knows exactly how to wrangle clever six year olds while making their mom feel loved, loved, loved.

The only thing the above quote leaves out is that the mom is a smart and successful Black surgeon who is raising Black daughters and is WONDERFUL. And y’all, Rafe uses YouTube and patience and learns how to braid their hair, which, OMG. Also the twins are like real kids. They have different personalities and they get into different kinds of trouble. Sloan is always in charge of bath night and this usually features at least one naked kid running around the house and a lot of screaming (mostly from the twins). Just because they are great kids doesn’t mean they aren’t hard to parent or nanny.

Some elements of this story defy plausibility, but that somewhat goes with the “fluff.” This book isn’t devoid of emotional weight. Rafe had a tough upbringing, Sloan has a controlling ex, her hours are long, and no one ever gets enough sleep. For the most part, this book is super escapist. But Rafe and Sloan become an item very quickly and the drama with the ex is resolved much more easily than I think it would be in real life.

Here’s the bit that just got me right in the feels:

I’m a tall White dude with a bunch of tattoos. I know how that freaks people out. I’ve also spent my whole life being calm and gentle with children. It’s alright just to be a calm and gentle guy.

I loved these characters and also the relationships they had with their friends and their families. I just could not get enough of the character dynamics, no matter who was on the page. It’s such a warm, loving (and very explicitly sexy) story, with an underlying daring in terms of subverting gender norms.

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Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

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  1. greennily says:

    OMG! I need this!!! Love Rebekah Weatherspoon!!!

  2. Laurel says:

    I couldn’t finish this book. Everyone I follow on Twitter seemed to be raving about it, so I bought it, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he was her employee and they hooked up in the house where he will be working for her on practically the first day he starts. In the age of #MeToo, this just seemed wrong.

  3. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    The thing that bothers me about the whole “manny” trope—and I know this will sound sexist AF, but I still need to say it—is the idea of a male employee taking care of children (especially girls) who are still young enough to require dressing/bathroom/toileting assistance or be in circumstances where clothes have to be removed, etc. I would think just the potential for the appearance of inappropriate behavior would keep both males away from the nanny profession and parents away from hiring them.

  4. JoS says:

    This sounds a lot like Ainslie Paton’s UNSUITABLE (female workaholic, male nanny) except I remember that one being more angsty than fluffy, and the hero struggles to find a job due to the potential issues it might cause (the latter is discussed in quite some detail).

  5. DonnaMarie says:

    @DisoDollyDeb, It’s sad that we still find female caregivers taking care of males completely acceptable yet ascribe questionable motives to male caregivers. It’s the 21st frickin century, and we still treat people who chose non-traditional roles as suspicious. Sad.

    That being said, ginger haired, tattooed nanny? I’d take that for a spin.

  6. Hollyg says:

    @DonnaMarie – Thank you – I was trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts.
    Also this book was in my huge TBR and just moved to the very top. I think this will work for the mood I’m in since I want a happy adult romance right now and it will be an reward for cleaning the house later today.

  7. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    @DonnaMarie: Whatever the reasons (social, cultural, sexual, etc.), as a society we are far more comfortable with women performing tasks that require potential contact with and/or incidental viewing of naked children. I know in my own experience (I work with special needs students, most of whom are in their mid-to-late teens), parents are often very specific about wanting female employees to performing any changing/bathroom-related functions. I’m not trying to be offensive or confrontational—but in my experience, the idea that parents would willingly hire a male to perform these sorts of duties seems highly unlikely.

  8. EC Spurlock says:

    I also love the trope subversion in that the boss is a powerful Black woman and the white dude is her employee and nobody seems to have a problem with that.

    @DiscoDollyDeb and @DonnaMarie, I can see both of your POVs; I think in this case we would have fewer issues with it if the children were boys rather than girls.

  9. DonnaMarie says:

    @DiscoDollyDeb, I’m sorry it sounded like a criticism, it wasn’t. Just a reflective comment on your observation. I work in the medical field where I have encountered many a male RN or PCT. It is unbelievable to me how many people a) assume that those men are gay and b) request a female nurse regardless of what they believe his sexual orientation is. I find it sad.

  10. Darlynne says:

    I tried to read this, just couldn’t get past the pants feelings that distracted both of them from the beginning. I’ve seen stunning people IRL, I understand the power of attraction, but … OK, I’ll try again.

  11. Tina says:

    I read this and generally liked it, But I have to agree with @Darlynne that the sexual attraction at the interview stage was a distraction.
    I did have to choose to hand wave that and go with the conceit of the story which is this hot, tattooed, muscled, ginger manny getting it on with his professional female employer. But it did still weigh in the back of my mind and in the end kept the book from being a total hit out the park for me. If the attraction had been a gradual thing, i think that would have worked for me better.

    I don’t have an issue with Mannys in general. Any caretaker male or female, not carefully vetted, can be abusive in any number of ways.

  12. Briana says:

    I also have worked with people with developmental disabilities in a care-giving capacity. I think people’s discomfort with one gender over another has to do much more with their continued preference to remain ignorant of the facts of sexual abuse – that women are just as likely as men to be perpetrators – and from a very naive idea that we can “fix” the problem with a simplistic solution.

    Conflating male caregivers with sexual predators is incredibly dangerous – because it ignores the reality of who might be doing the abuse – and it offers a false sense of security. It also perpetuates the idea that there is something wrong with men in nurturing roles, which just feeds into the giant heap of patriarchal bullcrap we’re all already drowning in and that is the real issue of MeToo.

    I liked the book, I loved Rafe and thought Sloan was great. It was almost too light and fluffy for me because there really wasn’t much conflict. I was in the mood for more heft to the story, I think.

  13. Berry says:

    I loved the idea of this this book, and the two characters were adorable. Rafe is definitely one of my favorite beta heroes. He cooks, he cleans, he’s emotionally articulate and supportive. Swoon. My main problem was them the way sex was described. Maybe I’m just squeamish, but I found the dialogue in those scenes to be super awkward. There was such a weird focus on his penis. I dunno how to describe it, but I didn’t find it sexy at all.

  14. catswithbats says:

    I really liked Rebekah Weatherspoon’s sugar daddy/sugar baby series so I’ll check this one out too.

  15. PamG says:

    I was conflicted enough about Rafe to review it on that big online bookseller’s site. I felt the book was tailored to be an angst-free comfort read, but I need a balance between angst and the discovery of love to find a book re-readable. I liked Sloan and loved her daughters, but Rafe was too much a busy woman’s interpretation of perfect. Class was slighted as a source for legitimate conflict, and alph-hole ex was realistically nasty without being over-the-top. The sex was explicit yet wooden. (Hur.)

    I noted the strangeness of Rafe caring for the girls, but I concluded that my discomfort was due to the bias of our abuse-soaked culture. I read and adored Gallico’s Thomasina when I was a kid, but when I re-read it a few years ago, a scene where Andrew MacDhui is bathing his daughter jumped out at me as being somehow wrong. I had to remind myself that fathers tenderly caring for their girl children would have been considered admirable in my youth and–dammit–still should be. Rafe came with excellent references and it was not unreasonable for Sloan to trust him, though it was odd that there were no comments on this legitimate concern within the book (much like the insignificance of class.) I’d have expected the ex to be all over that.

    All-in-all this book reminded me of those mom porn memes that feature the shirtless guy in an apron doing housework. Too much perfection equals bland, and bland doesn’t do it for me.

  16. Emma221 says:

    @DiscoDollyDeb It doesn’t strain credulity for me at all that a woman would hire a male nanny. I have a toddler daughter and have left her with male baby sitters. It’s actually plus to me because I want her to see men in these roles. Many people are still unfortunately retrograde and sexist and uncomfortable with men performing these jobs, but for a book about a male nanny to be believable there only has to be a few families willing to hire one, and these families definitely exist. (What does strain credulity is that these guy nannies are super hot and ripped instead of a bit soft and nerdy, but the genre does have its expectations…)

  17. cleo says:

    I love Rebekah Weatherspoon. Are either of the two MCs queer? I don’t seem to be reading het romance these days and I know that her m/f romances often include a queer protag.

  18. Berry says:

    @cleo My memory is that neither are described as queer

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