Wrong to Need You is a novel that is so engrossing, so engaging, that as I was reading it I didn’t realize that at that very moment in time, I was being peed on.

Yes, that’s right.

Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai is so good that it will keep you from noticing you’re sitting in urine.

There’s a story here (obviously) and you’ll get it, but first I need to talk to you about the book.

This is the second book in the Forbidden Hearts series, and while it’s not necessary to read the first book Hate to Want You ( A | BN | K | AB ) to understand this one, I do feel that it adds important emotional context to the story.  One of the reasons I don’t read a ton of non-suspense contemporary romance is that it’s difficult for me to find believable external conflict that keeps characters apart. This books creates a scenario that  was so complicated, it made me wonder how the hell the hero and heroine would ever get together.

The heroine, Sadia Ahmed, is a bisexual Pakistani-American, a widow, a bartender, a single-mom, and a business owner. She’s all those things, faceted and complicated and wonderful. Her husband, Paul, died in a hiking accident leaving her to run the café they co-own and raise their son Kareem.

Sadia doesn’t manage to do all that because she’s some organizational whiz or superwoman. She’s constantly exhausted. She relies on her family to support her. She fucks up and feels terrible about it. She panics and feels overwhelmed. I loved how incredibly human and relatable Sadia was, and I loved the depictions of her loving but also imperfect family. I loved her acknowledgement that they were such a vital part of her life, while admitting that they sometimes hurt her, too.

The hero is Jackson Kane, Paul’s brother. In the previous book, Hate to Want You, we learned that the Kane family was in business with the Chandler family, running a successful chain of grocery stores. They had a massive falling out and one of the Chandlers bought Jackson’s mother out of the store for pennies on the dollar. In assumed retaliation, someone burned down their flagship store, and Jackson was accused of the crime.

He spent time in jail, and was so hurt and betrayed by his family not immediately leaping to his defense that he left town and didn’t come back. He missed Kareem’s birth. He missed Paul’s death. Jackson and Sadia were friends since childhood, and she felt incredibly let down that he vanished on her and ignored his nephew.

The book opens with Sadia bartending and fantasizing about one of the clients, who is sitting alone in a booth with his cap pulled down. Turns out that patron is Jackson, and Sadia is horrified to learn that she’s having sexual thoughts about her dead husband’s brother.

The whole book is about forbidden attraction. I know it’s not the Tudor era, but wanting to sleep with your late husband’s brother still feels taboo. It’s also about Jackson finally coming home and helping Sadia out and finding out why he stayed gone. And his reason is solid – I don’t want to give away the details, but I understood his reasoning.

In many ways the story is also about the weight of secrets pulling people down. Sadia doesn’t tell her family the café is struggling, nor that she and Paul were looking at divorce when he died. Jackson doesn’t immediately explain why he didn’t reply to any of Sadia’s emails.

The real beauty of the story is that these secrets are uncovered, the hurts addressed, the wounds soothed in slow layers. Nothing is solved in an instant. Jackson has years of pain to resolve with his own family and with the Chandlers. He doesn’t fix it all in an epic moment. Sadia accepts Jackson’s help with the café, but he never swoops in to rescue her.

Maybe that’s why I liked this book so much. It’s about two people who have lots of issues independent of each other which they need to work through in order to come together. It’s got a lot of angst, but also a lot of healing.

And I need to talk about Jackson for a moment. He’s this big, muscle-y quasi-celebrity chef who barely says a word. He’s a huge physical presence who tries to minimize himself. He’s shy and quiet and doesn’t interact well with people. He’s also kind and gentle–the exact opposite of what people would think about a man who looks like him.  Sadia is the aggressor in their sexual encounters, and while it doesn’t quite cross the line into a D/s relationship, Jackson longs for her to call the shots in a way that flavors him a little like a submissive.

So that’s why I didn’t realize I was being peed on.

I was reading this at the Cat Café on my lunch break and I had Willow, a partially paralyzed kitty, chilling out next to me. I knew Willow had some incontinence issues and I totally don’t blame her at all, as I knew I was supposed to be vigilant for pee.

I was not vigilant for pee.

Nope.

I was so absorbed in this novel that I didn’t realize that my pants were absorbing urine until finally some little alarm went off in my head that my thigh was really warm.

Brain: Wet! Warm! Not Good!

Also Brain: STFU because THEY NEED TO GET TOGETHER AND HEAL EACH OTHER OMG THESE BEAUTIFUL, BROKEN BABIES.

Brain: Seriously, dude, that’s pee.

I wound up sitting on a towel in my car (always carry a towel) and calling my boss and explaining to him that I had to finish the day from home as I currently reeked of, and was soaked in, cat urine.

So, yeah. I do not think I can possibly endorse Wrong to Need You more strongly than “it will make you forget you’re sitting in cat pee,” but if I could, I would, because this book is everything wonderful. It’s angsty and cathartic and sexy, and four months feels like far too long to wait for the third book in the series.

And while I don’t have a picture of Willow (you will meet her soon in another review) I did have other feline assistance while reading this book, and later with the review: