Did I think there would come a time when I was reviewing two Daddy romances? No, I sure did not. But here we are, and I have to say right up top that these are both good books and I enjoyed reading them. Both books came so highly recommended and were too affordable to resist.
In Adriana Anders’ Daddy Crush, a young woman is pining for her older neighbor. Jerusha grew up in the Shenandoah to a very conservative religious family. She never fit in, but her sheltered upbringing means she doesn’t really fit in to city life in Richmond, VA. She’s left the family farm and has enrolled in an MFA program. With support from her grandmother, she has become an established fiber artist and earned a college degree online. She sheltered, but she isn’t naïve. Karl, her neighbor, feels like he has a past to make up for. As attracted as Karl is to Jerusha, he is certain he is too old and too damaged by life to be good for her. Jerusha asks him to kiss her anyway. And then she asks him for sex lessons. Sex lessons are a cover for the feelings they have for each other. Karl eventually realizes that Jerusha may be inexperienced, but she is not immature or uninformed.
Even as Karl’s feelings send him spinning like a top, Jerusha becomes more confident. Whether or not Karl is going to reciprocate her feelings, whether her family will ever accept who she is, Jerusha comes into her own. She starts off uncertain how to get hat she wants, but she asks for it anyway. Jerusha is very quietly subversive. She has had to be to get from the farm she grew up on to being on here own in Richmond. Within the confines of a monogamous, heterosexual relationship, Karl and Jerusha kick a couple of bricks off the patriarchy.
Katee Robert is a writing machine. She has released at least seven books this year and has two or three ready to be published next. I’ve read a few, and they are entertaining. Her heat levels are high, she likes exploring consensual kinks, and when she gets into menage, everyone is touching everyone.
In Your Dad Will Do, Lily shows up on the porch of her ex-fiance’s father on a cold night in a small dress and no underwear. Her goal is to get revenge on her cheating ex, Max, by fucking his father, and she has reason to believe he will be open to seduction. Though Shane was Max’s father, they were attracted to each other, they knew it, and they didn’t speak of it. Your Dad Will Do is a long weekend of dirty talk, foreplay, and fucking, and character growth. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, as Shane says at one point,
Let’s just say there’s enough asshole in this situation to go around.”
Robert works a lot of emotional nuance in to her story. Lily is getting revenge, searching for closure, and avoiding her feelings, but also reaching for the relationship she wanted with the person she wanted. Shane slips easily into the dominant Daddy role, but it is clearly a sex play role. He is willing, to a point, to be the anesthetic that Lily uses to avoid pain, but he also wants a real relationship with Lily. Apart from the copious sex, they like and respect each other. They are clearly friends in a way that Lily was not with Max. There is a sweetness and care to their relationship. Chapters 18 through 20 are among the sweetest I’ve read this year.
Daddy isn’t generally my thing, either in my life or in my reading so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed both of these. Daddy kink is pretty wide ranging and both of these books are on the tamer end of the spectrum – an older man who gets bossy in the bedroom and also takes care of his lover emotionally. It doesn’t require an age gap, but age gap romance does lend its self to the Daddy dynamic. I’m also not a huge fan of age gap romances, but as long as it’s an age gap between consenting adults it isn’t a deal breaker for me. Daddy Crush works it’s way around to calling Karl a Daddy, while Lily gets right into it with Shane in chapter one.
I haven’t read Daddy Crush, but Your Dad Will Do was a delightful surprise – way better and sweeter than I would’ve guessed from the premise.
I think several of us read it and then didn’t talk about it.
I can loan Daddy Crush to you if you would like
This always brings me back to Julie Anne Long pulling off the nearly 20 year age gap in What I Did for a Duke.
Yes, I almost made a blanket statement about not liking age gap romances, but then I stopped being able to count on one hand the number of exceptions. I don’t go looking for it, but I mostly won’t turn a book away because of it. I don’t consider under the age of majority/grown ass adult to be age gap so much as predatory grooming.