This one is the kind of romance that hard-core romantics
pine for. Though the premise starts off as something of a romcom, this is a
straight-up romance.
Dale McGuire is a happily single business-owner who
enjoys mingling. With her own scars from the past, Dale’s business partners are
also her closest friends and perhaps her only family. Things are moving as
usual for her when life as she know is it upended when a ten-year old boy turns
up at her garage saying that she is his ‘other mum’ and that she needs to help
their family, especially is mummy. Dale takes the child back home and sees the
very gorgeous, very pregnant Rebecca Harper. Fiercely private, Becca is
struggling with a difficult pregnancy and trying to make ends meet. Becca has a
lot of terrible experiences in her past and is scared that Dale has come to
take her child away. She freezes Dale and sends her packing. But Dale tries to
find ways to help Becca and also reassure her that her children are safe.
As with all Jenny Frame’s books, the pairing is super-butch
and super-femme, but this is the first one in which it didn’t bother us. Usually
extremely butch and heavily masculine-presenting MCs make us seriously wonder
why the femme MC is gay at all. But that is probably just us. However, this is
one book where the dynamic really, really worked. Dale with her gentle persistence
and tender caring is perfect for the strong yet vulnerable and disturbed Becca.
We also really, really liked that a situation that could’ve blown into an ego-issue-leading-to-conflict
was not given that power. Instead, that situation is dealt with in the most
perfect way that love should react.
This one is perfect for die-hard romantics.
⭐⭐⭐⭐★
