Reading this book is no mistake

Since Meryl Wilsner’s debut book, Something to Talk About was the only Sapphic novel nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2020 in the romance category, this author caught my attention. Wilsner’s debut showed a lot of potential, which now Mistakes were Made confirms.

Cassie Klein is a college student who has a one-night stand with an older woman that she meets at a bar. Despite their incredible chemistry together, Cassie doesn’t expect to see Erin ever again, but the morning after, Cassie realises that Erin is her best friend’s mother. Their attraction is hard to ignore and soon they start to sneak around to have sex but as both women begin to develop feelings for each other, will they have any chance of a happily ever after?

Mistakes were Made is also known as the MILF book on social media and features a popular trope for readers of Sapphic romance: age gap. But unlike many Sapphic romances, there’s no ice queen heroine to thaw, Erin is an expressive lover to Cassie and a loving mother to her daughter Parker. There are no power plays and the relationship she establishes with Cassie is of equals. Wilsner uses multiple taboo factors, age difference, best friend’s mother, and secret relationship to enhance the conflict and create tension. As both women take more risks to see each other, the reader is always waiting for the inevitability of people discovering their secret affair. It’s as inexorable as their pent-up attraction for each other: “Cassie was a bad decision that Erin wanted to make again and again”.

This story also combines other popular tropes like no strings and college student/older woman relationships. As in any no-strings story, sex is the vehicle for the mains to establish a connection and eventually develop feelings for each other. In romances, sometimes it’s hard to find the perfect number and quality of intimate scenes so the book stays on the side of romance and doesn’t tip to erotica. In this case, there are a good number of sex scenes varied enough so the reader doesn’t get bored and to convey how Cassie and Erin’s relationship progresses to a more meaningful status. The overall result is super hot.

The audiobook version is performed by two narrators, each one reading the point of view of one of the main characters. I’d rather have a single narrator because the characters’ voices change but in this case, it was fine for me as both performers have a similar voice tone. Both narrators did justice to the written text. I really enjoyed this book and I’m looking forward to whatever Wilsner writes next. 5 stars.

At the moment of writing this, the audiobook was only available in Scribd

Length: 11 hours, 59 minutes