I think J. T. Geissinger’s book Pen Pal misrepresents itself. Even the blurb is misleading, promising a story about a a woman who receives a letter from some dude in prison which claims he will “wait forever if I have to.”

I told the mystery man he had the wrong woman. He said he didn’t. I said we’d never met, but he said I was wrong.

We went back and forth, exchanging letters every week that grew increasingly more intimate. Then one day, the letters stopped. When I found out why, it was already too late.

Kayla has just buried her husband, Michael and “Everything is meaningless. There’s a Michael-shaped hole” in her chest. But she has to get on with life.

First up, fixing the leak in her roof. Enter Aidan.

His height and size are immediately intimidating, as is his stony expression. He has dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark beard covering a square jaw. Wearing faded jeans, battered work boots, and a hunter-green button-down shirt rolled up muscular, tattooed forearms, he looks like he just wandered out of the forest after building himself a cabin from trees he cut down with an axe.

Cue banter and before you can say “dead husband” Kayla and Aidan are doing the horizontal mambo and, no surprise to anyone, it is the hottest sex she as ever had in her life.

Pen Pal is not really about pen pals. Someone appears to be stalking Kayla (which is how she ends up at Aidan’s apartment in the first place – don’t bother trying to make sense of that. Their relationship falls into the insta love category – pretty much my least favourite trope.

Their sexy fun times are often cringey because she is a rabbit and he is the lion and there is some sort of under explored master/slave dynamic which makes zero sense. And then we come to the twist…which apparently emotionally wrecked readers, but I was just huh?

So, this is not dark romance because Aidan is a good guy. I don’t think spanking = dark romance. Both main characters are under developed. Overall, the book seemed to be trying to be more than the sum of its parts.

I read it in an afternoon, but I won’t be reading anything else by the author.