You know how you go into a used bookstore, and there's a rack of $1 books toward the front that are the sad overflows that not even a used bookstores wants to keep anymore, and if you don't take any of these home the bookstore people are going to send them to the woodchipper and turn them into toilet paper? Yeah, that rack.
That's where I found Megan Hart's The Space Between Us. It seems to be a romance; that's what the cover says, and Goodreads says Hart writes "non-traditional romance."
Hoo boy, does she ever.
Because this is a book about a threesome. Tesla is a bisexual girl working a coffee shop. Meredith is one of her customers. Meredith has charisma; she can charm anyone into opening up and telling her their wildest, most intimate and detailed stories. And Meredith uses that talent to get under Tesla's skin and seduce Tesla… her Meredith, and for Meredith's husband, Charlie.
This isn't really a romance, though. No, it's a character study about two different women, Meredith and Tesla, and how they do or do not reveal who they are. It's how Tesla has had a wild life and willing heart, but she really just wants to be ordinary and romantic. It's how Meredith has a normal and boring life, but she collects people's stories to be wild vicariously. With Tesla, though, she has a chance to be wild for real… and that's when things go off sideways for all three.
Hart does an absolutely amazing job of revealing, step by step, who Tesla and Meredith are. Charlie's a bit of a cipher, because he's generally a "good guy" who's not gonna complain if two beautiful women both want him, but he doesn't know what to do when those two women stop getting along. But this isn't classic romance mask & essence writing, because the point isn't to show how right these characters are for each other, but how wrong.
It was a great read, and I picked up two of Hart's books off that stand.