Publication Date: February 13, 2024
“Nikki Payne skillfully spins the tale of a well-known Jane Austen classic and makes it entirely her own. Thoughtful, hilarious, and smolderingly steamy.”—Kristina Forest, author of The Partner Plot
Two sisters roll up their sleeves to run a dilapidated inn but must learn to work with the locals in this deliciously spicy novel inspired by Sense and Sensibility.
There’s never a good time to learn you are your father’s secret child—especially not at the reading of his will. With their father’s affairs laid bare and Nora’s sensible reputation in tatters due to a viral video scandal, she and her free-spirited sister have nothing left but a rustic inn in the middle of nowhere and each other. What’s more, they need to revamp the inn before Labor Day or they lose it all. Nora hasn’t even knocked the traveling dust off last season’s designer boots when she’s confronted with three problems:
1. She really should have watched more HGTV.
2. She hasn’t seen another Black person for miles.
3. A tall, dark stranger has already staked a claim on their property.
Native Abenaki eco-tour guide Ennis “Bear” Freeman has seen hapless tourists come and go. When he spots two pampered city girls at his unofficial headquarters, he expects them to catch a flight out of the inhospitable coastal Maine backwoods within a week’s time. But Nora, turns out, is made of sterner stuff. And as she rolls up her sleeves to breathe new life into the inn, she unwittingly reignites a flood of emotions inside of Bear that he had very intentionally suppressed.
Their connection is electric, their desire palpable. But Bear’s silence about his mysterious past might turn out to be the one thing that sends Nora packing.
All Nora Dash wants is for people to forget the explicit video that blew up her life, leaving her reputation in tatters. To add insult to injury, she learns a terrible secret about her deceased father that throws her world into chaos.
However, with the assistance of her sister, Yanne, Nora finds hope in their inheritance of Barton Cove. Of course, there’s the minor fact that the property is in foreclosure to the tune of half a million dollars, and the debt must be paid within a year.
That’s the premise for Sex, Lies and Sensibility, a rollicking romantic comedy by author Nikki Payne. It’s an interesting retelling of an Austen classic, this time with a racially diverse cast of characters.
Things really get messy when the Dash sisters encounter Bear, who has laid claim to the property as a member of the Abenaki Native American Tribe of Maine.
Add a viciously hateful half-sister amid plenty of humorous one-liners, and this tale will leave readers begging for more.
Sex, Lies and Sensibility serves up a memorable cast of characters with a fresh twist.
By day, Nikki Payne is a curious tech anthropologist asking the right questions to deliver better digital services. By night, she dreams of ways to subvert canon literature. She’s a member of Smut U, a premium feminist writing collective, and a cat lady with no cats.
