Honey Bee Mine by Sarah T. Dubb: Review, Tropes, Spice Level & What to Know
If you’re looking for a romance filled with small-town charm, summer festivals, beekeeping, complicated family histories, and two people learning that doing everything alone isn’t always the answer, Honey Bee Mine by Sarah T. Dubb may be worth adding to your reading list.
Published in February 2026, Honey Bee Mine is a contemporary romance by the author of Birding with Benefits. It follows hardworking beekeeper Penny Becker and Zander Bouras, a former small-town bad boy who reluctantly returns to Sullivan’s Glen with his son. When the two end up working together to save Penny’s struggling farm through the town’s Honey Festival, old assumptions begin giving way to something very different. Simon & Schuster describes the novel as a “sweet and sexy small town romance”; the paperback is 320 pages and was published by Gallery Books on February 10, 2026.
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What Is Honey Bee Mine About?
Penny Becker has built her life around work.
She runs Becker Farms, cares for her bees, and has learned that when things need to get done, the safest person to depend on is herself.
Unfortunately, the farm is in trouble.
After an expansion plan financed with a loan goes badly, Penny needs money quickly or she could lose the property. Her big hope is Sullivan’s Glen’s summertime Honey Festival. If she can make the event bigger and more successful than ever, she may be able to keep the farm afloat.
Then Zander Bouras returns to town.
Zander spent summers in Sullivan’s Glen when he was younger and earned a reputation as the local bad boy. Now he’s a successful restaurateur, divorced, and a father. He has no intention of staying permanently—he plans to deal with the farmhouse his grandfather left him and eventually return to Boston.
But Zander’s son takes an immediate interest in Penny and her bees, and before long Zander finds himself helping Penny plan the Honey Festival.
The two already have opinions about one another.
Most of them aren’t particularly flattering.
As they spend more time together, though, they begin realizing that the versions of each other they’ve carried around for years aren’t necessarily accurate.
Honey Bee Mine Book Review
One of the more appealing things about Honey Bee Mine is that the romance isn’t happening in a vacuum.
Penny has a farm she could lose.
Zander has a son and a complicated relationship with the town where he spent difficult summers growing up.
Both characters have histories that influence how they approach relationships, responsibility, and accepting help from other people.
That gives the book more emotional weight than the cute bees-and-Honey-Festival premise might suggest.
The beekeeping is also more than background decoration. Library Journal specifically praised Dubb’s beekeeping research, and the author has said the book includes “a lot of bee facts” alongside its small-town romance and themes of healing and coming home.
At the same time, this is still very much a romance. There are funny moments, attraction, family interactions, festival planning, small-town personalities, and the satisfying feeling of watching two people slowly revise everything they thought they knew about each other.
Honey Bee Mine Characters
Penny Becker is the beekeeper at the center of the story. She’s hardworking, independent, and deeply attached to Becker Farms. Her determination is one of her strengths, but the novel also explores what happens when self-reliance turns into refusing to let anyone help.
Zander Bouras is the former Sullivan’s Glen troublemaker who has grown into a successful restaurateur and father. Returning to town forces him to confront memories and assumptions he’d rather have left behind.
Winter is Zander’s son, and his fascination with Penny and her bees helps bring Penny and Zander into one another’s lives.
The supporting characters also give the novel a strong community and found-family element. Dubb has described the book as including queer found family and an exploration of what it means to come home—and who makes a place feel like home.
Honey Bee Mine Tropes
The book fits several popular contemporary-romance searches:
| Trope / Element | In Honey Bee Mine? |
|---|---|
| Small-town romance | Yes |
| Single-dad romance | Yes |
| Former bad boy | Yes |
| From dislike to love | Yes |
| Forced teamwork | Yes |
| Summer romance | Yes |
| Found family | Yes |
| Farm / beekeeper setting | Yes |
| Returning home | Yes |
| Mature adult characters | Yes |
| Open-door romance | Yes |
Is Honey Bee Mine Spicy?
Yes.
Don’t let the cute cover, bees, and small-town Honey Festival make you assume this is a closed-door romance.
The publisher calls it both “sweet and sexy,” while Library Journal specifically notes that it contains plenty of steamy material.
Honey Bee Mine Spice Level
I’d describe it as:
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ / 5 — explicit/open-door romance
So if you’re looking specifically for a cozy small-town romance with spice, this fits that category much better than a closed-door or fade-to-black romance.
Is Honey Bee Mine a Small-Town Romance?
Very much so.
Sullivan’s Glen isn’t merely where the characters happen to live. The town, farm, Honey Festival, family histories, and community relationships all contribute to the story.
Sarah T. Dubb has said that the setting was inspired by time she spent in New York’s Finger Lakes region and the area’s small towns and frequent local festivals. She wanted to use familiar small-town-romance ideas while giving them a more contemporary treatment.
That makes Honey Bee Mine especially relevant for readers who like books where the town itself becomes part of the appeal.
Is Honey Bee Mine a Single-Dad Romance?
Yes.
Zander is a father, and his relationship with his son is an important part of the story rather than simply a label attached to the character.
He initially returns to Sullivan’s Glen because he doesn’t want to lose time with his son while his ex-wife is there for the summer. His son’s interest in Penny’s bees then helps pull Penny and Zander together.
If single dad romance books are your thing, that’s one of the clearest reasons to put this on your list.
What Is Honey Bee Mine Really About?
Underneath the romance, the novel spends a lot of time on independence versus connection.
Penny believes keeping everything under control means handling it herself.
Zander has spent years defining Sullivan’s Glen through painful memories of his childhood.
Both characters gradually have to reconsider stories they’ve told themselves for years.
That’s why the Honey Festival works nicely as the centerpiece of the book. Penny’s entire goal is technically to save her farm, but accomplishing that increasingly requires her to do exactly what she struggles with most:
Let other people in.
The author’s own description of the novel emphasizes healing, returning home, and deciding who creates a sense of home.
Is Honey Bee Mine a Standalone?
The publisher presents Honey Bee Mine as its own novel rather than as an installment in a numbered series. Sarah T. Dubb’s previous romance is Birding with Benefits, published in 2024, while her next announced novel, Love at First Flight, is scheduled for February 2027.
So you can read Honey Bee Mine without reading Birding with Benefits first.
If you enjoy Dubb’s combination of adult characters, hobbies, romance, and emotional growth, however, Birding with Benefits is an obvious next choice.
Who Should Read Honey Bee Mine?
I’d put this on your TBR if you enjoy cozy small-town romances, single-dad romances, summer settings, adult characters with established lives, found family, farm settings, community festivals, romances with explicit spice, or stories about learning to accept help from other people.
It should also appeal to readers who enjoy romance novels built around unusual hobbies or professions. Birding with Benefits used birding; Honey Bee Mine gives you beekeeping.
There’s something fun about finishing a romance and realizing you also somehow learned things about bees.
Books Like Honey Bee Mine
If the small-town side is what appeals to you, this would fit naturally beside other contemporary romances centered around farms, returning home, community events, and characters whose lives are already complicated before the romance begins.
If you’re specifically interested in Sarah T. Dubb’s style, start with Birding with Benefits.
And this section gives ComfyPages a future internal-link opportunity: once you publish 10 Cozy Small Town Romance Books or 10 Best Single Dad Romance Books, link those roundup articles here and link back to this review from the roundup.
Is Honey Bee Mine Worth Reading?
If you want a summer romance with a genuinely distinctive setting, Honey Bee Mine has more going on than its very cute title suggests.
The bees and festival give the story its personality, while Penny’s farm troubles, Zander’s relationship with his hometown, parenthood, family history, and their mutual difficulty letting go of old assumptions give the romance something substantial to work with.
It’s cozy without being completely conflict-free and sweet without being closed-door.
And for readers who want their small-town romances to feature adult characters dealing with real responsibilities alongside the flirting, it should be particularly appealing.
Final Thoughts
Honey Bee Mine takes a lot of familiar romance ingredients—small town, returning bad boy, single dad, stubborn heroine, summer festival—and gives them a memorable setting built around bees and a family farm.
But the more interesting idea underneath all of that is fairly simple:
Sometimes being capable of doing everything yourself doesn’t mean you should have to.
For Penny and Zander, falling in love means reconsidering not only what they think about each other, but what they’ve spent years believing about themselves.
And apparently a few thousand bees don’t hurt either.
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