Man Hands by Sarina Bowen and Tanya Eby

The blurb:


BRYNN

At thirty-four, I’m reeling from a divorce. I don’t want to party or try to move on. I just want to stay home and post a new recipe on my blog: Brynn’s Dips and Balls.

But my friends aren’t having it. Get out there again, they say. It will be fun, they say. I’m still taking a hard pass. 

Free designer cocktails, they say. And that’s a game-changer. 

Too bad my ex shows up with his new arm candy. That’s when I lose my mind. But when my besties dare me to leap on the first single man I see, they don't expect me to actually go through with it.


TOM

All I need right now is some peace and quiet while my home renovation TV show is on hiatus. But when a curvy woman in a red wrap dress charges me like she’s a gymnast about to mount my high bar, all I can do is brace myself and catch her. What follows is the hottest experience of my adult life. 

I want a repeat, but my flying Cinderella disappears immediately afterward. She doesn’t leave a glass slipper, either—just a pair of panties with chocolate bunnies printed on them.

But I will find her.

Lori:  "Try it," Carolyn said. "It's funny."

Ladies, Carolyn didn't lie.

I laughed out loud on page 2. I finished the book in one day. I laughed out loud a few other times. I snickered, I snorted and for once, I read all the sex scenes.

It's an erotic romance without erotica. It's romance with actual heart. 

It worked. It seriously worked.

It wasn't just that it was funny. This book took a trope I despise and made it work. And that's sex between strangers. It sets my teeth on edge. But in this, I was okay with it. Brynn is newly divorced, she's at a party and she sees her ex with a woman who is basically a younger version of herself and she can either fall apart or launch herself at the gardener.

She launches. Has sex. Condom is involved. And then later things go all wrong. But at that point, I was all in.

Carolyn:  It is truly a romance for modern times. Brynn likes to cook and she started a blog and uploaded three recipe books to Amazon. So when a partygoer videos her ... um ... experience with Tom, her book sales go out of sight and here blog gets all sorts of hits. It just tickled me, it was so millenium, lol.

And, like Lori says, it's erotic and yet not. I think it's because they're doing stuff beside tab A into slot B. You know, dialogue, shit like that. There was no time for precum! Thank God!

There's also the usual girl herd - well, in this case a trio. Ash shocked me just a bit, both her name and her language, but I got used to her and the part she played at the end of the book had me in stitches, lol. Bet the next book is about her.

Love the sense of humor displayed by these authors and despite the crazy blurb, loved the plot. These people were adults; any misunderstanding was not allowed to grow. They TALKED to each other.

And they make the cutest damn couple.  :-) 

Lori: Because no book is perfect, we will say that the cover sucks. I mean, it really sucks. Like yuck.

And I had some small issues with the girl posse because they had a lot of shit going on with them and I didn't know if they were just being set up as sequel bait or if we weren't supposed to care. I cared, dammit!

But the book was adorbs and I can't suggest it highly enough. Thank you Carol for promising I'd laugh. You were right.