Never Been Kissed

Never Been Kissed by Molly Fader (writing under the name Molly O’Keefe) is the second installment in the Boys of Bishop series of contemporary romance novels, following Wild Child (2013). As with the first book, the novel takes place primarily in the fictional town of Bishop, Arkansas.

Brody Baxter is a Marine Corps veteran, with service in Afghanistan. He now works in private security, part of a detail guarding one Senator Rawlings (and his mistress, Gina). His former employer Harrison Montgomery, scion of a legendary political family (his father is the governor of Georgia, and Harrison is running for Congress), recruits Brody to oversee the release of Harrison’s younger sister, Ashley. She was kidnapped while doing aid work in Africa by Somali pirates, who demand more than a million dollars in ransom. (Complicating matters, Ashley was also the reason Brody had quit working for the Montgomerys, for she had come on to him when she was seventeen.) After Ashley’s release, her manipulative mother, Patty, wants her to do a press conference the next day, showing off her injuries to boost her father’s and brother’s respective political careers, but sick of her mother’s manipulations, as well as her mother’s attitude toward the mixed-race Brody, Ashley says to Brody, “I need to go someplace my family won’t find me.”

Brody takes her from New York to Bishop—described as being located between the Mississippi and L’Anguille rivers about ninety minutes outside West Memphis (Crittenden County). Brody had been adopted at age six by a family in Bishop and grew up there. Brody’s brother Sean runs the Pour House, the local bar, and puts Ashley up in the apartment above the bar. Brody has a strained relationship with both Sean and their father, Ed, who is dying, and Brody and Ashley share an unspoken attraction for each other.

Complicating Brody’s effort to keep Ashley hidden is the fact that the reality series What Simone Wants (mentioned in Wild Child) is filming in town, and one of the crew recognizes her. Too, Ashley confides in Cora, owner of a local restaurant that is the Pour House’s main competitor (another case of conflicting attractions, given that Cora and Sean have a mutual attraction that remains unspoken due to their business competition).

Ed invites Brody and Ashley to the weekly dinner he has with Sean, and afterward Brody and Ashley talk about their respective families before finally becoming physically intimate. Cora offers Sean, a notoriously bad cook, cooking lessons to help with his planned expansion of the bar. At their first cooking lesson, Sean and Cora come clean with their feelings for each other. Meanwhile, Ed and Brody begin to reconcile, and Brody and Ashley can finally be honest about their own feelings.

A member of the film crew snaps a picture of Ashley and sends it to his producer, and journalists start showing up in town. Ashley finally talks to Harrison and agrees to do a few limited publicity events for his campaign but intends to return to Bishop, where she has begun organizing activities for senior citizens. Harrison comes to Bishop in time for the launch party for Sean’s bar expansion. However, things go south when Brody’s former client, Senator Rawlings, is murdered in Saudi Arabia by his mistress, who turned out to be an Egyptian operative within the Arab Spring movement, because he had been selling arms to the government of Yetarzikstan (a fictional country). Brody will risk being subpoenaed, and his connection to Ashley could threaten Harrison’s political campaign.

Brody leaves for Washington DC, telling Ashley and Sean it is necessary that he separate from them, but both protest that he is running away from what he most wants. In DC, Brody realizes that he has become estranged from his old life: “His home was miles away, a one-room apartment above a bar, filled with junk and love.” Ed, hearing about Brody’s departure, has a heart attack. Brody returns to Bishop, reconciles with Ed and Sean at the hospital, and then goes to New York to express his real feelings to Ashley, telling her, “I was so scared of losing you I never let myself have you. Even while I was falling in love, I kept reminding myself that it wouldn’t last.” The epilogue finds them back in Bishop three months later, with Brody proposing to Ashley.

Never Been Kissed was followed by Between the Sheets (2014), which finds Brody and Ashley the parents of twins. Harrison Montgomery is the main character of the fourth book in the series, Indecent Proposal (2014), which relates to the fallout of a quick marriage that is mentioned in passing in Never Been Kissed, but that book does not take place in Bishop, Arkansas.

For additional information:
O’Keefe, Molly. Never Been Kissed. New York: Bantam Books, 2014.

“Review: Molly O’Keefe’s Never Been Kissed, or The Flower and The Watering Can.” Miss Bates Reads Romance. https://missbatesreadsromance.com/2014/08/17/review-molly-okeefe-never-been-kissed/ (accessed March 12, 2025).

Review of Never Been Kissed. All About Romance. https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/never-been-kissed/ (accessed March 12, 2025).

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas