By Meryl Wilsner

My rating: 4 stars

Goodreads Rating: 4.04

Publication Date: October 11th, 2022

Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance / LGBTQ

Format Read: Paperback

Goodreads Summary: From the critically acclaimed author of Something To Talk About comes a sharp and sexy rom-com about a college senior who accidentally hooks up with her best friend’s mom.

When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup—it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom—the hot, older woman Cassie slept with.

Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn’t known Cassie was a student when they’d met. To make things worse, Erin’s daughter brings Cassie to breakfast the next morning. And despite Erin’s better judgement—how could sleeping with your daughter’s friend be anything but bad?—she and Cassie get along in the day just as well as they did last night.

What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost? 

Find the book: Goodreads | Amazon

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Review

I don’t normally read novels where romance is at the core of the plot, but when I was reached out to about reading Mistakes Were Made, I jumped at the chance. Not only was it about a bisexual engineer who was in her senior year of college, but it was also a queer age gap romance where the relationship somehow still didn’t have any creepy power dynamics. As a bisexual person whose celebrity crushes all trend… older, to say the least, this book was practically made for me.

Mistakes Were Made is about a college senior who hooks up with an Older Woman during her night out at the bar. The one night stand appears to go successfully, until the next morning when she goes out to brunch with her (college freshman) best friend and finds out that the older woman is this friend’s (divorced, single) mom. Rather than doing the right thing and putting their hookup in the past, the two struggle through their attraction, constantly being pulled back into each other’s orbit jus when they think they’ve escaped it once and for all.

My main fear for this book was that it would utilize coming-out drama to create a predictable and tired plot line. I was pleasantly surprised that it never once even debated going down this route. Erin, the mom, has always been out as bisexual to her daughter, Parker, who is also gay. Cassie has only seriously dated a man, but all of her friends know that she’s bisexual. Cassie’s childhood best friend and Parker’s roommate, Acacia, is perhaps the only straight character in the novel.

There was a TON of smutty scenes in the book, so if that is what you’re into, this will surely not disappoint. Even if you’re not, though, there’s enough character development in this book to carry you through. Cassie and Erin both had work to do on themselves at the beginning of the book, and Wilsner provides the space for them to grow as individuals even while growing towards each other. I hate when a book is very “she changed me”, and while the relationship helped each of them grow, I believe that Mistakes Were Made avoided that trope by having them each grow because of traits that the other brought out in themselves, not because the other person did any active work to make them different.

This book was hot. A MILF dream, if you will. Wilsner did such a great job of twisting together personal drama with relationship drama so that there was always something going on to keep me turning the pages. I would most definitely read another book by them in the future, and I highly recommend you all read this one when it comes out in October.