Our main character, escaping Kingston to her island home before a hurricane hits, she comes upon a confused naked man by the road. Previously a nursing home nurse, she trusts her instincts that he needs help so she takes the amnesiac to her island to ride out the storm, naming her mystery man Monty. Long widowed, she falls in love while also imagining worst case scenarios. A unique story, & yes we find out who he is. ( )

My first mistake was going into this audiobook blindly. I chose this selection because it was free and short, but I would have passed it had I taken the time to read the synopsis or other reviews. With that said, here is my review on the book:

A hurricane is coming to Jamaica and a strong, well-to-do, middle-aged single woman has told her daughter she is off to make sure her private island and belongings are safe, but on the way she sees a beautiful man (of course), standing naked (of course) in the road. He claims he remembers nothing, so she does what any sane person would do and brings him to her house where she has no way of contacting anyone from the outside world. It's okay though because the man is good looking and in such a VULNERABLE state that she's delightedly turned on by the idea that she feels like she now "owns" him. Weird, but OK.

They hang out for a few days and he makes a great house guest, but she spends a fair amount of her time creeping on him. It's okay though because remember, he's like, really, really hot, so it's not weird that she watches him sleep.

Eventually they decide he needs to remember where he came from and he plans to leave, but not before coming into her room at 4am and just immediately sticking his dick inside her. That's how sex normally works, right? Someone comes from another room in the middle of the night and you just... get to going? Foreplay is overrated anyway. The main character keeps yelling at the strange man to LOOK AT HER while he has sex with her because at this point, she's finally feeling a little insecure about the whole situation. The next morning he leaves and she returns to her life of distrusting men and avoiding her daughter. A few months later, she receives a letter from the man, complete with a photo of him and the wife he cheated on, as well as his children.

The story was both boring and tasteless. Not smutty enough to be smut, and way too smutty for someone who doesn't want to constantly listen to this woman talk about sex in the least sexy way possible. When it ended, I googled the author to see what a woman with this kind of weird exploiter fantasy looked like, and was surprised to see the author is, in fact, a 60-year old man. Oof. ( )

Spring 202o (May);

One of the Audible Originals from May's ten released for free. I really loved this story. It's all about reclaiming yourself, whether you remember who that self is or don't. I loved how steeped in its culture it was. I even, truly, found myself touched by the most unexpected of endings, both realistic and romantic all at once. ( )

Interesting, yet not very memorable ( )

How Esther Got Her Groove Back
Review of the Audible Audio audiobook edition (April 2020)

Adult romance is not my genre but the narrator Paula-Anne Jones was excellent in her delivery of this story in a melodious Jamaican accent, so I'm bumping this up to a Like for that. Otherwise the story of a 50ish widow with life ennui who encounters a man with amnesia on a mountain road and brings him to her sea island painting retreat is fairly standard stuff. The revelation of the reason for the amnesia wasn't the dramatic surprise that you thought it would have been leading up to.

The Mountain and the Sea was one of the Audible Originals made freely available to members for the month of April 2020. It is available to everyone for a standard price. ( )