by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
Read by Connor Crais, Victoria Connolly & Teddy Hamilton
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Content: There was swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and lots of explicit on-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Maddie is coming off a long-term relationship that has left her broke and unsure of her direction in life. So when she lands a job as an adjunct lecturer at the university in Mount Astra, Kansas, she jumps at the chance. Unfortunately, adjuncting doesn’t quite pay enough so she picks up a side job as a nanny to supplement her income.

Bram has been divorced for five years and has been raising his three girls with his ex-wife. Things are going well enough until his ex-wife gets a grant to study a glacier in Alaska for two months. It’s impossible with his job as a science professor at the university to handle all the childcare duties, so he hires a nanny.

He just wasn’t supposed to be so attracted to her (or she to him).

This was a mix for me. On the one hand, the characters kept feeling like they were bad for wanting this relationship (she is 26 and he is 35, and they actually had a one-night stand before she went to work for him), like it was some sort of terrible kink. It’s not. And that bugged me. As did the use of the word brat. (As in “she’s so bratty” or “the brat”). It was also borderline too much sex, not enough plot, but it managed to save itself in the end. I did like Maddie’s journey to figure out what she wanted – it felt realistic after coming out of a long-term relationship where she changed herself for the guy. And I appreciated that she was comfortable in her body, and the body-positive aspects of the story. I did love the side characters (except for Joey Kemp,who was just annoying and took up too much space in the book), and wouldn’t mind spending more time with them. I didn’t hate the book, but I didn’t love it either.