Release Date: 23th June 2022

Rating: ★★★.75

Blurb:

A standalone, steamy, arranged marriage romance.

There’s rich.

Then there’s the Ellsworth family. The Kensingtons. American royalty.

Money buys power, and power always has a price. The fear of those who already possess both? Losing it. The best way to ensure keeping it? Alliances. And elites don’t marry down—they marry equal.

For Scarlett Ellsworth and Crew Kensington, that leaves one option: each other. Accepting that inevitability is very different from embracing it. That’s the only thing they agree upon.

It was meant to be a union for better and for business.

Instead, it challenges everything Scarlett and Crew thought they knew about themselves, their families, and most of all…each other.

Review

Despite my rating - this book was overall an enjoyable and entertaining read and wouldn’t say it’s a bad book. It’s a decent fun read but don’t expect too much from it plotwise.


I liked Scarlett as lead at first. She’s far from a spoiled brat. She’s a fierce businesswoman who fears to appear weak or powerless. And I really enjoyed reading about her and her sassy remarks and dialogues she had with Crew. My opinion of her changed a bit throughout the book but I will go into this later.

Crew Kensington. the male counterpart in this romance. And throughly enjoyable and simp worthy.
Those two together made for a thrilling couple that never backed down from an argument.

And together with the side characters they created a great story. And the family names made me feel like I’m back in the gossip girl world.

My only problem and the reason behind the rating was the pacing and order of events that felt a bit off. I get it - it was supposed to be a push and pull. Steps forwards but just as many steps backwards at first. A teenage attraction that turned to married people against total will.
But still I was getting a bit annoyed. Every time I thought we made some progress - we took several steps back. And sometimes those steps back felt unreasonable to me. Immature and a tad annoying at times

I would have preferred a slower developing love but with a continuous development with maybe occasionally small steps back eventually. This would have given the book continuous flow and created a founder experience in my eyes.
The quite fast developing sexual but more importantly emotional attraction - but then constantly going backwards when when they got closer - only got me frustrated. Make it more of an actual slowburn so they don’t need to have backwards progress and unreasonable miscommunications that often, for what seems like a plot device to stretch the book and story.
Slower pacing would have created a more natural stretch and would have also been more reasonable.
Everything, especially the ending, felt a bit rushed and often things were told instead of shown.
There were also a few aspects of the plot that felt like exactly that - plot for plot reasons. Somewhat inconsequential and if have been left out nothing significantly in the story itself would have changed.
And one specific plot twist I personally distaste that came way too early for my liking.


But don’t get me wrong - I still throughly enjoyed this book and would still recommend as a quick easy read with some banter, spice and feelings to just give you a good time when reading.

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