Review – Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon
Series: Loose Ends #1
Series Rating:
Published by Rebekah Weatherspoon on September 26, 2018
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
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All Dr. Sloan Copeland needed was someone to watch her kids. What she found was the man of her dreams…

After a nasty divorce and a thousand mile move, Dr. Sloan Copeland and her twin daughters are finally getting the hang of their new life in Los Angeles. When their live-in nanny bails with no warning, Sloan is left scrambling to find a competent caretaker to wrangle her smart, sensitive girls. Nothing less will do.

Enter Rafe Whitcomb. He's all of those things, not to mention good-natured and one heck of a whiz in the kitchen. He's also tall, and handsome, and bearded, and ripped, and tatted, wrist to neck.

It doesn't take long for the Copelands to invite Rafe into their home. Just as quickly, both Sloan and Rafe find themselves succumbing to a heady mutual attraction, neither of them wants to deny. With every minute they spend under the same roof, this working mom can't help but wonder if Rafe can handle all her needs...

**This stand-alone romance is fluffy. So fluffy. It’s fluff. Low. Angst. Fluff. featuring a large tatted, motorcycle riding ginger man, who bakes a mean bacon quiche and knows exactly how to wrangle clever six year olds while making their mom feel loved, loved, loved.**

While RAFE is a stand-alone novel here's a suggested reading order to get you to this point SATED (Fit #3) (Meegan) SO SWEET (Daniella and Duke origin story) HAVEN (Meegan) WRAPPED (Meegan, Shae, Sarah) RAFE

Every time I read a book by Rebekah Weatherspoon, I ask myself why I haven’t read more Rebekah Weatherspoon. 

Rafe is delicious. I mean… just look at that cover. Tall, tattooed, ginger, bearded. Holy crap. And he’s just so damned sweet. 

And Sloane. Wow. I have a huge crush on Sloane. She’s one of the, if not the, youngest black heart surgeons in the country. She manages to be great at her job, a great mom, and a great girlfriend while still managing to be someone I want to crack open a bottle of wine and watch an episode of The Bachelor with. 

I have to admit, I was a little hesitant to start this one because the parent/nanny dynamic makes me uncomfortable. Not only was Sloane paying Rafe to be her nanny, he was living in their spare room, eating the food that Sloane bought, and using her car to tote the kids around. It’s awkward to read. 

Unfortunately, that never really went away. I appreciated that Sloane and Rafe acknowledged their attraction immediately and discussed it, but their plan to just see how it went didn’t really fix the issue. I just think that once a couple starts sleeping together, neither of them should be paying the other anymore, and that piece of it wasn’t really addressed. 

The reason that complication didn’t make me stop reading, as it has in the past, is that Rafe was such a well-done character. So often in a romance novel, when it’s a man hiring a female nanny, she ends up taking the job because she’s desperate for money, suddenly finds herself without a place to live, and is often on her own in a new city. The power dynamic in those instances is extremely unnerving. 

None of that was the case here. Rafe wasn’t desperate for money. In fact, he had recently decided to not take another nannying job for a little while so he could regroup and figure out his next step. After his last job ended, he’d moved back in with his family, who was happy to have him, so he wasn’t on his own. Unlike a lot of the other nanny/parent books I’ve read, I knew that if the relationship between Sloane and Rafe went bad, he’d be fine. 

The other issue I had was that it was all just a little too easy. Sloane and Rafe met, they were attracted to each other, they eventually agreed to act on that attraction, and they just went for it. There wasn’t really any drama, there weren’t any conflicts, just smooth sailing from beginning to end. Rafe and Sloane were hot together, and I’m thrilled that they found each other and got their HEA, but I like a little bit of drama. And there was a bit with Sloane’s ex-husband, but even that was resolved relatively easily, and we got the fallout from that in the epilogue, not the main story.

And to be clear, the description of the book says it’s low-angst. This wasn’t a case of a bad book or bad writing. I got exactly what was described – gruff bearded nanny, low-angst fluff. This is a Smut thing, not a Rebekah thing. It turns out I just like a little more angst than I got here. 

But I love everything I’ve read by Rebekah Weatherspoon, and this one was no different. She’s such a good writer, her characters are fantastic, and even the six-year-old twins were fun, not plot moppets. 

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