Love, love, love the title. And the book so totally lives up
to the lovely title.
Nadine Costa is a high-end escort, which means dating
but no touching and definitely no sex. She’s approaching thirty, retirement age
from her current profession. Early for one of her ‘dates’ she meets a beguiling
young lady, Rome Foster, who’s come for an interview with potential
investors for her app. The two strike up a conversation in which Nadine shares
the nature of her ‘date’ right before realising that Rome is a participant of
the evening’s meeting. With tacit agreement, neither mentions the fact that
Nadine is in fact an escort and before the evening is over there is a bit more
bonding between them than expected – enabled by one lascivious man in the group
and some well-timed statements by Nadine which help Rome’s efforts.
Nadine is quite taken by the ‘straight’ Rome and offers to
play guide to her for the next couple of days. The sparks between them are
undeniable and despite her protestations about being straight, Rome is entirely
into Nadine and unexpectedly relishes her flirtations.
Rome gets her funding and moves to her namesake city and
their relationship develops.
Nadine and Rome are engaging from word go. Nadine is crush-worthy
and Rome is woo-worthy. The chemistry between them is off the charts which
comes to awesomely satisfying fruition first in the sex scenes and more fully
in the depth of their emotion towards each other.
We loved the respect, support and interest that Nadine and
Rome had for each other’s work. First Nadine never hid or apologised for her
job as an escort and after an initial faux
pas, Rome didn’t bother about hiding Nadine or her work from her new
colleagues either. Gold has created two impressively original ideas for both
her leading ladies work-wise. Besides her job as an escort, Nadine is a
perfumer. The impressive originality in Nadine’s work as a perfumer is the line
she’s working on. Similarly, Rome is an app developer, but the app she has
created to measure an individual’s carbon footprint is fabulous. We’re not sure
if something like that already exists, but are convinced that it should exist.
Besides the two winsome leads and their fantastic
relationship, there is Gold’s description of places – Rome in this case. We believe
that Gold has actually travelled to each place she writes about, has experienced
it all and shares the best parts of each new place in ways that make it irresistible.
With this one, we felt frenwah for
Rome. (Fernweh is a German word that translates as ‘farsickness’ and refers to
“feeling homesick for a place you've never been or could never go.”)
Thankfully, there is no angst created between Nadine and
Rome in their relationship. The conflict and drama comes from outside their
relationship in a #MeToo scenario. We wish all women who have ever been
harassed or abused by men (in power particularly) received the kind of quick
resolution as they did in this one. But then fiction is free to create utopia
and we can hope it comes to pass in real life at some point too.
All in all, this one is most definitely recommended.
⭐⭐⭐⭐★
