Starred review from August 1, 2022
Rea’s excellent sophomore novel (after The Wedding Ringer) follows a couple who must face the trauma of their pasts to find happiness in the future. Zookeeper Lucy is thrilled when it’s announced that the zoo she works at will be featured on the next season of On the Wild Side with Kai Bridges. Reading about Kai’s mother, a famous primatologist, is what inspired Lucy to dedicate her life to gorillas, and Kai might be the closest she can get to meeting her hero. So of course, their first meeting is disastrous: Kai corrects Lucy’s facts and she dismisses him as a conceited mansplainer. When Lucy’s boss asks her to head a project pairing an orphaned baby gorilla with a surrogate mother, a process Kai wants to feature on the show, she’s not as excited as she could be. It means both spending time with Kai and appearing on camera, something Lucy’s avoided ever since her mother abandoned her to act in soap operas. But as Kai helps Lucy prepare for her close-up, the pair bond over their shared love of weird animal facts and their tense parent-child relationships. Rea elevates the enemies-to-lovers trope with crackling chemistry, light humor, and genuine emotional nuance. Rom-com lovers should snap this up.
December 1, 2022
Zookeeper Lucy Rourke loves tending the gorilla troop at the Cincinnati Zoo so much that despite being extremely introverted, she agrees to appear on the television show On the Wild Side where host Kai Bridges documents her team's care of this majestic endangered species. While Lucy idolizes Kai's mother, the famous primatologist Dr. Kimber, Lucy misjudges the typically over-the-top TV star and pegs him as both privileged and rude. But as Kai and Lucy continue to work together recording the zoo's attempts to bring an orphaned baby gorilla into the troop, Lucy finds that Kai is far more serious and caring than she gave him credit for. VERDICT Warmly narrated by Emily Lawrence, who brings both Lucy's struggles to find work-life balance and Kai's rich, worldly accent to life, Rea's latest (after The Wedding Ringer) is a delightful contemporary romance listen. Recommend to listeners who enjoy romances that combine unusual careers and original settings with the swoons, such as Denise Williams's Do You Take This Man.--Elizabeth Gabriel
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