
Series: Sugar Baby #1
Series Rating:

Published by Rebekah Weatherspoon on September 29, 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 100
Format: eBook
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Desperate times call for desperate measures...
And desperate is the only way to describe Kayla Davis's current situation. Out of work and almost out of money to cover her bills, Kayla finally caves to her roommate's nagging and follows her to Arrangements, an online dating site that matches pretty young women with older men of a certain tax bracket.
Convinced this "make-rent-quick" scheme will surely fail - or saddle her with an 80 year old boyfriend - Kayla is shocked when Michael Bradbury, Internet billionaire and stone-cold salt and pepper fox, offers her a solution to all her financial troubles. It's hard enough for Kayla to accept his generosity, but what's a girl to do when the wealthiest man she's ever met is a dream in and outside of the bedroom?
Yes, I’m very far behind on Rebekah Weatherspoon. This isn’t the first book of hers that I’ve read, but I need to read more of them. Maybe July should be Rebekah Weatherspoon month at my house.
Anyway…. Kayla was adorable. I really liked her a lot. She was outspoken, honest, and not afraid to go after what she wanted. She was also stuck. She’d been out trying to get a job for months, with no success, and her bank account was dangerously low. Realizing that she’s in a financial hole and that it’s just getting deeper, she finally agreed to go along with her roommate’s plan to bring in some much-needed cash. She signed up for a service that matches sugar daddies with sugar babies (I don’t love those terms) and immediately attended her first mixer.
And promptly landed the great white whale. Michael Bradbury was a billionaire, and he was instantly smitten with Kayla. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go; in my reading experience, most billionaires end up being assholes. Michael was an exception; he wasn’t even asshole-adjacent. He was a giant marshmallow, and watching him break through Kayla’s defenses was so good. Even though her financial situation was dire, she wasn’t going to just allow Michael to sweet talk her into a sugar arrangement. She spelled out exactly what she needed and didn’t need, and exactly what she would and wouldn’t do or accept. And Michael was good with all of it. He was so good about making sure she felt safe all the time, that she was never in a situation where she felt trapped.
Kayla was described (by herself, mostly) as curvy, thick, chunky, etc, so it was clear that she wasn’t a typical preternaturally skinny romance heroine, but it was just a thing. We were all aware of it, but it was never a focal point, and Kayla herself was good with her body. She was smoking hot and knew it. There was absolutely no self-loathing, never even one comment from Michael, or Kayla, or her roommate, or anyone else. It was wonderful. When Adler first brought up the idea of Kayla joining the sugar baby organization, Kayla did express that she didn’t think a “chunky-plus black girl” would be very successful in her attempt to land a sugar daddy, but she didn’t say it as a person who hated herself, or someone who had any sort of body issues. She was just being realistic. And, as it turns out, she was also wrong. Because Michael was extremely attracted to her from the instant they meet, and it was an honest attraction, not a fetishization. He just thought she was gorgeous.
This was so good. Kayla was hilarious, and smart, and just so real. Her circle of friends was diverse and far-reaching, and all of them were as well-drawn as Kayla, Michael, and Adler. None of them were caricatures, or one-note; they were all fully-developed characters in their own right. When they all hung out together, I felt like I was right there with them, and I was content to hang there all night.
In other words, do yourself the biggest favor and pick this up. I will warn you though, that it’s the first novella in a trilogy of novellas, and they all follow Kayla and Michael. This one wrapped most of the threads up, so if you read it by itself, you’ll be ok. But I can almost guarantee that you’ll want to pick up the next two and keep hanging out with this group of people.