Because I’m trying to make more of an effort to read interracial romances, perhaps it was inevitable that Amazon was going to flag me for the BWWM subgenre. Either that, or their algorithm has correctly deduced that I am a black woman married to a white man. (Well done, algorithm!)
When this book popped up in my Amazon recommendations, I remarked to my husband that the title had a lot going on. We’ve got a middle-aged heroine, a billionaire, and some contract babies. Using the plot as title is a bold strategy.
In honor of Loving Day, I decided to give this one a try.
Plot summary: Tessa Cooper and Cade Rowan are both having a bad day. Cade learned that his father has left him the family business on the condition that Cade produces an heir. Tessa has been unable to find a job and is about to lose the home she shares with her six year old son. They drown their sorrows in an extremely hot one-night stand, after which Cade proposes that they could solve one another’s problems. To wit: he’ll give her a million dollars to bear his child. It’s an offer Tessa can’t refuse, especially since the two share sizzling chemistry. Tessa struggles with protecting her heart and her son from this man. Cade is afraid to let himself need both Tessa and her son. It may be too late for either of them.
Tl;dr review: This book is a satisfying quickie of a romance. There is a small twist toward the end prompting the requisite break-up on the way to HEA, but this book isn’t surprising anyone. Both the hero and heroine are blandly nice. The sex scenes? Steamy.
Real talk: While they are not huge obstacles, I had a handful of problems with the book. Tessa’s navel churned a lot which sounds more like indigestion than arousal. (Is this my first heroine with IBD? Go, representation!)
Tessa is a romance novel Small Wonder, a girl unlike other girls.
“No other woman he’d ever known was so comfortable with herself that she’d get so casual. The women he slept with were always concerned with how pretty they looked at all times… .”
Cade, let’s be honest–you probably spent no more than 3-5 hours in the company of those women. That’s not a lot of time to let the hair down, ya know? Trust me, all ladies take the shoes, bra, and make-up off at the end of the day. If you had a habit of sticking around, you’d know that.
In addition to being More Casual Than Other Girls, Tessa is also a bit dim. She agrees to Cade’s proposition because she has no money and just got hit with hospital bills for her son’s care. Anything to save her son, right? But no thought to what’s going to happen to this baby? Somehow, the fact that she’d be walking away from another child to save the first doesn’t come up until more than half-way through the story.
Cade is almost mythical in his perfection. He is uninterested in children, but immediately bonds with Tessa’s son. He is eager to impregnate Tessa to regain his company, and willing to wait until Tessa is ready to try. (Tessa’s age never comes up as a matter of concern. For either of them. While I appreciate this nod to the fact that women can and do have babies into their 40s, but advanced maternal age is a real thing. A guy who needs a kid pronto would absolutely be thinking about this.) One of my hesitations with the BWWM subgenre is that I’m never quite sure who is being fetishized in the stories. Is it the black heroines, women who represent a real-life demographic almost universally excluded from our social standards of beauty? Is it the white heroes? Are we exoticizing mentions of her dark skin against his light skin in the bedroom? He never knew he liked ‘em thick? Jackson largely avoids fetishizing the melanin disparity between Cade and Tessa. In fact, Tessa could have been white and not a line of dialogue would change. No episodes would take on alternate interpretations. Even so, most of these complaints don’t diminish what Jackson accomplishes here which is crafting a fun escape love story, perfect for a shady spot on a sunny day. Three stars. Supplemental reading:
That title though! Good review!
Great review, but not a book I think I need to read.
I can’t see myself evangelizing for the book, but solidly written romances with black female leads can be hard to come by so I wanted to review it for CBR. (I had a whole digression into “urban romance” that I just punted to the much better written article on The Toast.)
For real. Have you read Rebekah Weatherspoon? Her So Sweet series is great.
I couldn’t get into So Sweet, but I have read her FIT trilogy. #3 was *whoo*.
Oh, yes, that was was verrry good.