When we first meet Jo-Beth Connoly, aka Plum, she’s at work. Adam Wade is watching her give his step brother and business partner a blow job in a private room at The White Van, a strip club run by the Steel Bones Motorcycle Club. Adam’s brother tries to short Plum on money and a fight ensues. Adam gives Plum more money than she’s owed to settle the issue. Plum is concerned Adam may think they have some sort of pay in advance thing going. Adam is intrigued by Jo-Beth and pays her to go to dinner with him. It’s a little bit like Pretty Woman, in that a rich man hires a sex worker and they develop a romantic relationship. Except that Plum is a better story. I love it.
No one writes quite like Cate C. Wells. Her romances have joined the ranks of my favorites because no matter how bananas the premise, her characters are grounded and she dives into the kinds of things I like to contemplate, like the structures of oppression, without sacrificing story. Jo-Beth and Adam have in their own ways, been turned into commodities – valued for what they provide rather than for who they are. In a lot of ways, they also see themselves as goods and services. The secret though, is that Cate C. Wells is writing them as humans, people with inherent worth. That makes all the difference in keeping Jo-Beth from becoming either trauma porn or a hooker with a heart of gold who must be saved from her life of sex work. Adam is so confused by his attraction to Jo-Beth, and he treats her like a commodity a couple of times. Once he realizes that the love his family has for him is conditioned on what he provides, he’s able to understand the connection he has with Jo-Beth. We really needed that epilogue, because we needed to see Adam down the road fully valuing Jo-Beth as a partner.
I don’t tend to like motorcycle club romances because they tend to lean into gender stereotypes. What I’ve come to appreciate about Wells’ approach to the MC life is that yes, most of the characters are happily insisting that women don’t get involved in “club business” and dividing women into categories according to their sexual availability. Except that there are an awful lot of exceptions. Harper Ruth is the club lawyer and all up in club business. Pig Iron’s wife, Deb, is the brains behind the club’s finances. The guys are really just in charge of the construction business and murder. Plum does a lot to draw back the curtain on the realities of life for women in the MC. The relationships between men and women are complex, and the border between Old Lady and Sweet Butt isn’t as solid as the men think it is.
I’ve read Plum a few times. This time I listened to the recently released audiobook, narrated by Jillian Macie and Tor Thom, who also narrate the other Steel Bones MC audio books. I now associate their voices with this world I return to over and over again. They do a great job of bringing the characters and world to life.