“Let’s just say, I think you’re abnormal in the best possible way.” – Marie Sexton
Title: Normal Enough
Author: Marie Sexton
Publisher: Amber Allure
Pages/Word Count: 24000 Words
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Blurb: When Brandon Kenner shows up at Kasey Ralston’s garage with a 1970 Chevelle SS 454, Kasey is smitten by both the man and his car. Between what Kasey considers a shameful fetish and his long estrangement from his family, Kasey finds it easiest to be alone, even distancing himself from his coworkers. But Brandon doesn’t think Kasey’s fetish is weird. In fact, he likes it.
Kasey doesn’t know how to resist a man as charming as Brandon, and he’s more than willing to be seduced. But what are Brandon’s long-term intentions? Kasey is afraid of hoping for too much, but equally afraid that when all is said and done, Brandon will leave, and Kasey will be left alone once again.
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Review: Kasey Ralston’s unique little kink is the gear that shifts this sweet story into sexy overdrive, when Brandon Kenner shows up in a classic muscle car that unwittingly plays right into Kasey’s every erotic fantasy.
Marie Sexton delves into the slippery concept of normalcy in Normal Enough, with a character whose innocence and complete lack of belief that his fetish for rare classic cars is anything less than a freakish perversion made me want to wrap him up in emotional bubble wrap until I could convince him that “normal” is relative and fluid and is nothing more than a label slapped on things that don’t force people to think or feel outside their own comfort zones.
I loved the opposites attract romance in this book, Kasey as the car mechanic and Brandon as the successful attorney, and the way the author brought their common pasts and love of cars together into a genuine attraction to each other: the one with the fetish and the one who kinda likes his guys a bit on the kinky side. Kasey’s insecurities about the whys of Brandon’s interest turned what could’ve been a simple lust-at-first-sight story into one with depth and weight to it, mostly because of Kasey and his vulnerability and loneliness. There was no doubt that Brandon’s interest in Kasey was initially one dimensional, but Marie Sexton gave these two men room—while not necessarily spelling it all out, then tidying it up in a neat little package at the end—to put together a string of tomorrows that could mean something lasting.
Normal Enough, the title says it all, and the author delivers what is by turns a thought provoking story that also just so happens to be incredibly sexy, and she does so with characters it’s impossible not to love and root for. Which, come to think of it, pretty much describes every Marie Sexton book I’ve ever read.
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