| Title: | Billionaire's Perfect Bride (True Match Arrangements Book 1) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author: | Ajei Novua and Jen A. Durand | |
| Publisher | Durand Publishing | |
| Publication Date: | January 15, 2017 | |
| Publisher's Description | Jay’s heart had been stomped on by the one he trusted the most. Love wasn’t reliable. It was an illusion. In that moment he decided he would rather have a partner who valued loyalty and didn’t subscribe to the pipe dream that is love. Bianca was desperate. Debt was slowly swallowing her whole and her mother needed more medical care than she could afford. True Match was her long shot and she’d hit the target. Jay didn’t want love and Bianca couldn’t help how her heart felt. Can their arrangement become a true match? |
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| My rating: | ***.5 | |
I enjoyed this book, but it read more like a second draft than a finished product. It’s a shorter novel, and while I felt that the story unfolded well, I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of the development of Jay and Bianca’s relationship. It was clear that they started out attracted to each other both physically and personality-wise, but I would have preferred to see this story start at some point prior to their wedding day. Overall, there was more telling than showing, in the form of overly expository dialogue and too-frequent flashbacks.
The book’s characters seemed more like archetypes than well-realized individuals (this is particularly true of Dalia and Imogene). Jay was the orphaned, wounded billionaire who’d been wronged by the woman he’d thought he would spend his life with. Bianca was the selfless, hardworking daughter who’d given up her own promising future to care for the single immigrant mother who’d raised her. But we never even learned where her mother was from or why Bianca’s father wasn’t in the picture. Also, how did Bianca learn of True Match Arrangements? In the midst of the mess that his personal life had devolved into the year before this novel took place, was there a single precipitating incident that made Jay decide to use the service? Fleshing out the reasons the behaved as they did would have made me feel more invested in both their separate lives and journey together.
This book would have benefitted from more careful editing. There were several instances of missing words and misspelled homophones, but there were also grammar and copyediting issues that a more careful eye might have uncovered. These mistakes didn’t ruin the experience of reading this book for me, but I certainly noticed them.
I enjoyed these authors’ work and I would certainly read the next book in this series.
I received this novel from one of the authors for free, in exchange for an honest review.
In terms of the storyline, this book was a 4 star read. It wasn’t without flaws, but the author wrote a compelling religious romance that I didn’t hate (and I generally can’t stand religious romances). Zenetta was a great character, and I really loved Blue’s evolution. Blue’s Beauty was surprisingly funny and possessed an underlying sweetness that touched me and made me feel more invested in what was happening than I normally do when reading romance novels. While I am not usually a fan of closed door romances, the steamy scenes in this book almost seemed de trop; the novel seemed so full to me that the scenes that raised the sensuality level didn’t actually feel necessary.