Thigpen-Gandy Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 979-8201993665
Contemporary Romance, 2021 (Reissue)
PSA time: Kristen Dixon’s Bea Mine was previously under the pseudonym KA Gandy. I tell you, sometimes, keeping track of these authors as they change their pseudonyms and the titles of their stories can be a huge pain in the derriere. Sure, these authors may have their reasons, but come on, sometimes one needs a database or something to keep up with these changes.
Anyway, Bea, our heroine, bakes and sells cupcakes, her specialty, from the Sweet Nothings Bake Shop. George Anderson is a regular, and she has been aching inside to make him a regular fixture in more than just her shop for, oh, since she was seven.
Is anyone feeling disturbed by the number of prepubescent girls running around lusting after older males these days? Just me? Okay, then.
Still, when Bea’s usual delivery guy is down with flu just when there is a huge number of deliveries that need to be sent out on Valentine’s Day, guess who is more than happy to make deliveries for her?
Oh, will she finally get that special delivery from him this Valentine’s Day? Well, I hope no one is expecting an explicit description of the big drop being, uh, deposited at her tingling doorstep, because this is a clean romance.
Why is everything about him so perfect? Couldn’t he do me a favor and be an unattractive grouch with bad posture?
Oh my, I hope the usual suspects don’t read this or the author may end up getting cancelled for ableism…
This one is a rather odd romance, in the sense that while the heroine’s internal monologues are cute and adorable in a good-natured, self-deprecatory way, the conversations in this story can be get too corny and cloying quite often. It’s like being stuck in a town that has everyone doing their best to be an over the top parody of small town folks, right down to the obsession of wanting to see Bea and George paired up.
This brings me to another befuddling aspect of the story: the townsfolk are pretty insistent on seeing these two hook up that they all but demand a public shagging in the town square for all to see, and there are absolutely nothing standing in the way between the two hooking up at all. So, what gives that they didn’t even think of it all these years even with the machinations of the people around them?
I feel that the romance and hence the story would be more believable had there been some believable obstacles in the way of Bea and George being the couple whose sex tape is on the rest of the townsfolk’s must-see list. Maybe he was in rehab all these days, or he was caught shagging a cow and had to leave town for a few years?
Judging from the author’s narrative style alone, this can be quite a decent read if one had a taste for cutesy-sweet small town stories. The whole premise doesn’t stand up well under scrutiny, however, and the end result feels more artificial than it probably should be.
