In the second installment of USA Today bestselling author Olivia Dade’s Harlot’s Bay series, a mistaken obituary leads to the reunion of two former high school crushes. Sparks fly in this hilarious grumpy/grumpy romance, packed with Dade’s signature body positivity and a delicious amount of spice.
Karl and Molly were never together. There was a time, right after high school, where it seemed like they might finally cross the line from friends to lovers…but instead, a foolish misunderstanding meant they never spoke again. Molly went to LA and got married. Karl stayed in Harlot’s Bay and bought a bakery.
The only connection the pair has shared over the years is painfully one-sided: Now divorced, Molly narrates monster romance audiobooks, and Karl is an ever-diligent listener, clinging to his only piece of the one that got away.
Still, Molly hasn’t totally left Harlot’s Bay behind. When she hears that Karl’s obituary has run in the local paper, unexpected grief prompts her to hop on the next flight to Maryland…where she finds Karl very much alive, the victim of nothing but an accidental obituary.
As the pair reunite, they finally hash out their missed connection. True, Molly isn’t quite ready to trust again, but Karl is determined to prove himself worthy of her faith and devotion. And as her remaining time in Harlot’s Bay ticks down, Molly, the habitual cynic, just might find that Karl, the cranky town curmudgeon, is impossible to leave behind a second time.

My Review:

There are towns named Climax in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, and those are just the ones that are officially incorporated. There are towns named Intercourse in Alabama and Pennsylvania. Why couldn’t there be a town named Harlot’s Bay in Maryland? Why shouldn’t there be come to that? And why shouldn’t the town lean ALL THE WAY into their name? Think of the opportunities!

The first book in this series, At First Spite, definitely put the ‘harlot’ in Harlot’s Bay. Literally. Into the air, as the FMC (female main character) broadcasts her love of extremely spicy romance over the rooftops of Harlot’s Bay by playing erotic audiobooks at high volume through the open window of her ‘Spite House.’

The FMC of THIS second book is the professional narrator of those audiobooks, Molly Dearborn, who once upon a time managed to stick a couple of years in Harlot’s Bay, long enough to graduate high school and actually make friends and put down roots. Roots that were ripped out by the, well, roots when her father’s wandering everything caught up to the family and she had to leave.

She left behind some unfinished business in the person of Karl Dean. Not an ex, not the one that got away – but more of a best friend and definitely an opportunity missed. Missed like an aching limb in spite of the twenty years and 2,500 miles that lay between them, along with her seventeen year marriage and acrimonious divorce, as well as Karl’s on-again, off-again relationship with one of their classmates.

They have history – just not the type of history or as much of it as either of them wished way back when. Still, it’s more than enough to make the news of Karl’s death hit Molly like a punch to the gut – or a kick in the head. She doesn’t even try to confirm it all that hard, she just gets on a plane from LA to Harlot’s Bay to attend his funeral.

Which is when she discovers that reports of Karl’s death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, were greatly exaggerated.

Discovering that Karl is alive after all just about brings Molly to her knees – and her heart into her sneakers. Even though they never were, he’s still the one she never got over. And very much vice versa.

Karl has a month to convince Molly that he’s worth her trust. She has a month to get this famously taciturn man to use his damn words for once in his damn life – although those cusswords wouldn’t be “damns” if Karl had even thought that sentence.

Their 20-year high school reunion is coming up, and the scene is going to be epic one way or another. The question is whether it’s going to be epic like a 90’s high school romcom or epic like a 90’s teen slasher movie.

Everyone in Harlot’s Bay has their cameras poised just waiting to capture the moment. Whatever it turns out to be.

Escape Rating A-: I wanted to say this was a romance featuring a ‘cinnamon roll’ character who also bakes delicious cinnamon rolls. But Karl is a bit too salty for that. Or it’s true if the recipe not only overdid the cinnamon but maybe included some pumpkin pie spice that went a bit too heavy on the ginger, cloves and allspice.

On the inside Karl is a marshmallow. Or, as one of his friends describes him, a Cadbury Creme Egg – “hard shell, gooey innards, very sweet, albeit somewhat off-putting to many and widely unavailable most times of the year.” That Karl is hesitant to let anyone close enough to even BE a friend, as well as his reluctance to admit that he even has actual friends, is definitely the icing on this particular cinnamon roll.

The title of this book doesn’t lie, this is very much a second chance romance. Even if they technically didn’t back in high school, they both knew that’s where they were headed if they could manage to get out of their own way – or get over their individual fears about trusting themselves and each other.

The central conflict is both freaking HUGE and totally real. Molly knows Karl can’t tell a lie to save his life, so whatever comes out of his mouth is the absolute, honest, well, everything. But he doesn’t EVER talk about his own emotions. While Molly, OTOH, has been lied to and betrayed by both her father and her douchecanoe ex-husband. Even though she admits they did – and in the case of her ex still very much DO – all their lying and betraying with words, she still needs to hear them from Karl if she’s going to uproot her whole life.

Women, in particular, are all too prone to trying to read a partner’s mind through their actions and being taken in by even scraps of affection and care. Molly’s not doing that again and Karl isn’t giving her what she needs, even though he’s damn good at giving her everything else she needs.

(I’ll fully admit that this part of the story, as important and real as it is, made its point way a whole lot faster than the page count devoted to it. It’s what made this an A- read instead of an A for THIS reader. Your reading mileage may vary.)

Still and all, I do like Harlot’s Bay quite a lot, both the town AND the people in it. At First Spite was a lot of fun and Second Chance Romance absolutely was too – even if, or especially because, it’s another book NOT to read when you’re hungry. I also adored the positive, realistic, body images AND aches and pains, not just that neither Karl nor Molly is a size zero or the male equivalent, but also the realism of pushing 40 – or 50 in the epilog – and the way that 40 and 50 push back, but that love has neither a size nor an age even when the lovers have a bit of a backache or a twinge in the knees.

In the end, I enjoyed the romance and LOVED the characters (in multiple senses of that word) in Harlot’s Bay. (I have a big soft spot in my heart for the Nasty Wenches Book Club.) I really hope we get to go back.

OMG it just hit me that the author’s paranormal romances, Zomromcom and the upcoming World’s Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon, are awfully close to the kind of books that Sadie Brazen, the monster romance author featured as a side character (so far) in the Harlot’s Bay series, writes. (Minus the finned cocks and beakgasms [not a typo, I swear].) Maybe, possibly, hopefully, one of these days we’ll have Sadie Brazen’s very own Harlot’s Bay romance to look forward to. She’s earned it, she deserves it, she’s entitled to it – and so are we!

Bestselling author Olivia Dade welcomes you to Harlot's Bay in this delightfully sexy rom-com about a woman who buys the town's famous Spite House, only to realize the infuriating man she can't stand lives right next door--and their unwilling proximity might spark something neither can ignore.
When Athena Greydon's fiancé ends their engagement, she has no choice but to move into the Spite House she recklessly bought him as a wedding gift. This is a problem, for several reasons: The house, originally built as a brick middle finger to the neighbors, is only ten feet wide. Her ex's home is attached to hers. And Dr. Matthew Vine the Freaking Third (aka the uptight, judgmental jerk who convinced his younger brother to leave her) is living on the other side, only a four-foot alley away.
If she has to see Matthew every time she looks out her windows, she might as well have some fun with the situation--by, say, playing erotic audiobooks at top volume with the windows open. A woman living in a Spite House is basically obligated to get petty payback however she can, right?
Unfortunately, loathing Matthew proves more difficult than anticipated. He helps her move. He listens. And he's kind of...hot? Dammit.

My Review:

Today is Valentine’s Day, which means that today’s review absolutely had to be a romance.

So when At First Spite sashayed its way to the top of the virtually towering TBR pile, with a come-hither look and a sassy come-on, I didn’t even try to resist its siren song.

Welcome to Harlot’s Bay, Maryland, a place that really, truly, seriously – if laughably – leans into its salacious name – and history.

Athena Greydon thought she’d be moving in with her new husband, Dr. Johnny Vine, tanned, rested and refreshed after their picture-perfect, one month Hawaiian dream vacation, meticulously crafted and created by Athena herself and her innate desire to learn and experience ALL THE THINGS.

Instead, Johnny is off on that vacation alone, after he left her just about at the altar because his brother Matthew convinced him to dump her, while Athena is moving into Spite House, the tiny slice of house attached like a limpet to the side of Johnny’s row house in ‘downtown’ Harlot’s Bay. In the pouring rain, alone with a 10 foot-wide, four-story house that is now all she has left to her name.

It was supposed to have been a wedding present to her new husband, because he wanted to tear out the wall and expand his own house. Now it’s a refuge for Athena’s pride, sailing all alone on a sea of regret.

Athena needs help to get herself moved in, and the only person offering is the last person Athena wants to ever see again. Johnny’s older brother, Dr. Matthew Vine, the man with the stick up his ass and the endless number of reasons why Athena would make a terrible wife for Johnny.

And he’s absolutely right, as the story eventually proves, but not from the perspective through which Athena originally sees – or actually hears – the argument. It’s not so much that Athena would make a terrible wife for Johnny as it is that Johnny would make a terrible husband for Athena. Or honestly, that they are just so wrong for each other that Matthew can’t even articulate it – if only because he’s spent nearly all his life parenting his younger brother and can’t even let himself think that he doesn’t have enough spoons left to parent them both.

Even though it looks like that’s exactly what will happen if they make it to the altar. And Hawaii. And the not so happy ever after that would inevitably come after.

For all three of them. Because, as much as Athena and Johnny are wrong for each other, Athena is entirely too right for Matthew – and vice versa. Even if no one will ever forgive anyone if THAT scenario comes to pass. So, of course, Matthew can’t let that happen, either.

Until it does.

Escape Rating A-: It’s clear early in At First Spite that the narrow confines of Spite House aren’t nearly wide enough to handle ALL of the emotional baggage that Athena, Johnny, and Matthew have deposited there, in spite of Athena being the only person actually living within its walls.

Because they are all hot messes – but not the same kind of hot mess.

As often as the author’s trademark sassy humor and snarky banter trip the light fantastic across the pages of this romance, the story in At First Spite is absolutely NOT all fun and games. (If that’s what you’re looking for, I highly recommend Spoiler Alert and its sequels because WOW what a terrific ride that series is!) Which leads right back into the hot messes that the three – and yes, really, it’s all three of them and it is, sorta/kinda, just the type of romantic triangle that should have landed them all in a session with Dr. Phil – or even the late Jerry Springer.

The heart and the heartbreak of the story in At First Spite lives at the corner of parentification and depression, and it’s not a pretty place – but it certainly is a real one. Not that any of the characters are all that great at communicating what’s going on inside their heads.

I want to be glib and snarky here myself, and that is utterly the wrong mood to strike. This is serious stuff, and stuff that all of us at least brush against at some points in our lives – no matter how much we’re taught not to, well, talk about it.

Athena’s situation – and Matthew’s contributions thereto – cause her to finally hit an emotional bottom she’s been tap-dancing over the top of for most of her life. At the same time, Matthew’s reluctant acceptance that everything he’s said about Athena is way more about his relationship with his younger brother than it has anything directly to do with Athena herself is a struggle that he keeps losing – which is where the parentification part of the story comes in – and very nearly does them all in along with it.

While Johnny’s charmed life of charming everyone around him, getting mostly what he wants while knowing that Matthew will pick up the pieces has to come to an end – he has to figure that shit out for himself while Athena and Matthew are concentrating – as they should be – on each other.

So, on the one hand – possibly the hand with a whoopie-cushion in it – this first book in the Harlot’s Bay series (and YAY about THAT!) introduces us to this charming, quirky town and the equally charming and quirky people in it. Along with their seemingly endless love for broadcasting salacious audiobooks of monster porn from the literal rooftops.

And on the other, much more serious hand, there’s a beautiful story about two people helping each other stand on their own two feet, discover their own worth in their own selves and learn to stick to their own guns about it, and learn to grovel appropriately when necessary with the help of grand gestures that also involve – you guessed it – rooftop audiobook broadcasts of anatomically impossible monster porn.

Along with the beginning of the story of one irresponsible man-child finally manning up and getting out from under his brother’s overprotective shadow. The rest of which story will hopefully be told later in the series, but in the meantime the next book is titled Dearly Departed, a story which will somehow, both heartbreakingly and hilariously in equal measure, manage to lead to a happy ever after for the local supplier of all audiobooks monster porn. Because I can’t wait to find out the who, what, when, where and why of that whole, entire thing.