Harbor by Rebekah Weatherspoon (Beards & Bondage #3)

Summary from Goodreads: Betrayed and set adrift…

Months before she’s set to walk down the aisle, assistant district attorney Brooklyn Lewis suffers an unthinkable loss. It’s bad enough her fiancé is violently taken from her, but along with her grief she must also process the fact that the man of her dreams was unfaithful. Friends and family want to see her heal, but Brooklyn doesn’t know how to move on from trauma and deception until she discovers she’s not the only one broken by this tragedy.

A light in the storm…

Attorney Vaughn Coleman and his partner Chris Shaw have also lost the love of their lives, who was found lifeless in the same bed as Brooklyn’s fiancé, taken from them by the same killer.

Unmoored by grief, Brooklyn, Chris, and Vaughn fall into a relationship that both fulfills them and threatens to pull them under the waves of guilt, but they soon realize it may take the love of three people to bring their battered ships back to shore.

*This romance features a polyamorous relationship between two men and a woman, with BDSM overtones*

FEEEEEELINGS. Harbor made me feel alllll the feelings. (Before I get into the review, I will give a brief content warning that the pre-chapter 1/off-page backstory contains cheating by romantic partners and death of romantic partners; there is also homophobia/kink-shaming on the page/related by characters’ family members.) The Beards & Bondage series (Haven, Sanctuary) concludes with an expertly-written poly/menage BDSM romance between three people brought together by the violent deaths of their romantic partners. Vaughn and Shaw lost their partner Corrine and Brooklyn lost her fiance Josh when Corrine and Josh were murdered by Corrine’s stalker – while they were together romantically. The affair was revealed during the police investigation which complicates the survivors’ grief. In a meeting after the funerals, Vaughn, Shaw, and Brook feel an immediate emotional connection, but Brook chooses to walk away for the time being. Getting involved in her dead fiance’s lover’s partners’ lives is messed up, right? Maybe? No? Over a year later, she contacts the two men, deciding that perhaps she would like to explore their connection and see if there is more in the relationship than just bonding over shared trauma. Each book in this series turns on the trauma-bonding between the main characters but I really feel like Rebekah excelled in this book, giving each character time to explore his or her own grief and trauma and wants and needs as the relationship progressed. The attention to detail in how Brook processed trauma versus Vaughn versus Shaw made them feel like actual real people processing their emotions right in front of me. The action of Harbor also takes place over a considerable time period – almost eighteen months prior to the epilogue – which really lends to the reality of this romance and allowed the characters to bond as people and also develop the trust needed in a BDSM relationship. The BDSM scenes, while certainly explicit, are exquisitely written. Rebekah could give a masterclass in how to make a scene hotter than hot but without using awkward euphemisms. The banter between each character was also so well-done. Brook and Vaughn converse differently than Brook and Shaw and Shaw and Vaughn, being in a long-term relationship, have their own conversational tics. Then you have Brook and her sister Liz – who is amazing in Sanctuary, do recommend. Nothing feels artificial – like I said, everyone feels like a real person instead of an invented character in a book. Poly romances in general are harder to me to get into because it feels like – in my head – there are too many people and emotions to keep track of. I did not have this issue with Harbor – each character’s motivations and needs are very clear and they all worked together toward a beautifully satisfying emotional outcome. I also want to stress the significance of having three Black romantic main characters – including a plus-sized Black woman being worshipped by two gorgeous men – on the page. Mainstream romance publishing still hasn’t quite got the memo on diversity of all kinds, so Harbor is self-published. I can’t order in paperbacks of Harbor to sell in my store, at least not yet, but I can tell you to go buy Rebekah’s books via your e-book retailer of choice and use your dollars to show that a polyamorous romance with Black characters is what you want in your romance reading. Harbor released on Tuesday, June 30, and if you haven’t yet read Haven and Sanctuary pick those up two and have yourself a wild reading weekend. Dear FTC: I read a copy of this book that I purchased on my Nook.