After his uncle dies, Russian Billionaire businessman Isaak discovers a contract between his uncle and English genealogist Kate. In it his uncle promises to give Kate and her family $3 million if she will marry his uncle for a year and spend 4 nights with him in Paris.
Enraged, he confronts Kate only to discover that he’s intrigued by her. So he makes her a proposition, transfer the contract to him and he’ll save her family. Angered at his audacity but unable to repay the money already given Kate agrees - after all she only has to follow the letter of the contract, not the spirit of it.
And so the honeymoon begins…
This is a novella that’s full of a lot more family secrets than I would’ve expected from the blurb. It takes them about half of the book to even get to Paris. And there’s a lot of antagonistic bickering back-and-forth. Marriage of convenience happens to be one of my favorite tropes. But this is a bit dubious consent. Mostly because he has all of the power and she is really behind the eight ball and unable to get out of the arrangement.
There’s some stuff here about virginity and rigidity that I wish had been handled a bit better than it was. I wasn’t terribly fond of the ending of the whole she’s not leaving Paris a virgin.
That being said I actually did like Kate and Isaak as characters. I liked the surprise backstory of family secrets that showed up and I wish I did more of a focus and away. I wanted more of them working together to discover his past. Basically things moved too quickly and were resolved too easily.
It’s not a bad novella. But I wanted more.
Because it’s not perfect and I don’t really feel the need to read the next book in the series I’m going to give this…
Three stars
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