SEX, LIES AND SENSIBILITY

A young woman, haunted by her past, finds hope in the Maine woods.

When Nora Dash’s father dies, he leaves two bombshells for her and her sister, Yanne. First, he had a whole second family—actually his first, comprising a wife of 35 years and her daughter from an earlier marriage. Second, Nora and Yanne have inherited a dilapidated house on an island in Maine, and if they don’t fix it up by Labor Day and pay off the mortgage, which is in arrears, the property will default to Felicia, their evil quasi-stepsister. Nora and Yanne decide to turn the property into an inn. After heading from Maryland to Maine, they find themselves the only Black women for 100 miles. But Barton Cove is not empty when they arrive. In fact, they are greeted by a mostly naked man warming himself by the fire. Although at first they think they’ve stumbled across a sex cult, what they’ve actually found is a tour group—including said naked man, who’d previously fallen in a stream and is now drying off. The group is led by Ennis “Bear” Freeman, an Abenaki man with dreams of becoming a college track coach. The chemistry between Nora and Bear is immediately palpable. After their awkward first meeting, they quickly decide to become partners: Bear will help Nora fix up the inn, and Nora will let Bear use the property to host his tours. But Nora and Bear both carry significant baggage: Bear is embroiled in a complicated relationship with his sort-of-ex-girlfriend and has a mountain of debt, and Nora is tormented by a sex tape that she and her boyfriend released in college. Much of the novel feels confused, with too much manufactured drama and an overabundance of plot points that at times takes away from the charming love story at its center. Despite these flaws, Payne’s voice is fun and sexy, and Nora’s thoughts in particular are a joy to read.

A moderately juicy romance with winks to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.