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Heroines Who Reclaim Their Narratives: Naima Simone’s Only for a Night

Content Warning: stillbirth.  One of the many things I love about Romance novels is that a lot of the stories are about women reclaiming and reshaping their personal narrative into something that speaks of happiness, agency, and love. In Naima Simone’s Only for a Night , Harper has been widowed for two years and she’s mourning the loss of her child and husband, but most importantly, the loss of her own sense of self and worth to the years she gave to an unfulfilling marriage. So, like many heroines before her, she decides that even if her grief will probably always be there, she can do one thing that’s purely for herself, something she always wanted and never got: she can have amazing, hot sex. In order to do that, she seeks the help of a man she used to love when she was young, a man with whom she shares a lot of history, but who also happens to own a sex club or, as the novel puts it, “ the hottest and most exclusive aphrodisiac club ” which means that in this universe there are
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Welcome to The Romance Backlist

Hello! I assume most of you already know me, but in case you don’t, my name is Brie and I’ve been reviewing romance novels for the past eight* years on my (now old) blog, Romance Around the Corner , and other places such as Heroes & Heartbreakers (RIP)**. When I started my original site, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew that I wanted to be an active member of a community that had given me a lot of joy. It was a wonderful journey that made me a better reader and introduced me to amazing people, many of whom I now call friends and all of whom I deeply admire. But burnout happens and reviewing takes energy that I simply didn’t have anymore, and yet, I kept thinking to myself that I was just taking a break, even when the months kept piling on. I love blogging and I didn’t want to say goodbye to it, but the thought of writing reviews under the same format felt draining and exhausting until I realized that what I really wanted to do was talk about books and the genre with