LynneC’s review of Ultimatum: Marriage by Ann Major
Contemporary Romance published by Silhouette Desire 12 Oct 10
This is a Silhouette Desire Man of the Month book, and when I saw the cover, I knew I had to read this one! Unfortunately, the inside didn’t match the outside.
Jake has lost the woman he thought was the love of his life to his brother. But he sleeps with Alicia, the daughter of a business colleague, and gets her pregnant. Then her father is in trouble, for defrauding and embezzling, including a charity for rehoming people after Hurricane Katrina. He is a snake.
But the story starts after that bit. I really felt that I’d come in when the story was half told and I wanted the first bit. But it starts when Alicia comes to Jake and admits she’s pregnant and asks him to marry her. Despite initial resistance, he does so. Jake comes across as a whiny, indecisive character who doesn’t really understand his architect’s business or the woman he has agreed to marry. His attitude to life is to be as miserable as possible. When clients cancel their orders after his marriage, he accepts it, but doesn’t tell Alicia. And despite setbacks that would undoubtedly close a business that wasn’t in a Silhouette Desire, he continues on as a billionaire. Because he marries her, and because of what her father has done, he has to lay off staff and receive a number of cancellations. And she won’t even give him sex.
Alicia is even whinier than Jake, with a streak of TSTL on the side. She said she wanted to marry him to give her baby a name, and if that isn’t a lame reason, I don’t know what is. Jake accepts responsibility, offers to support the child, but she wants marriage. Which is likely to ruin his business and have a knock-on effect on his brother Logan’s business, too. Once he marries her, she sulks around his place, and gardens.
That last surprised me, because pregnant women are often told not to do any gardening, because of the bacteria in the dirt, but if she wanted to garden, at least it reduced her sulking time. She supports her father, despite all the evidence being that he did what he’s accused of, and even visits him. If she’d loved her husband, as she claims, surely she’d have cut herself off from her father, or at the least made sure the paparazzi didn’t follow her there. But the paps are the bad guys, as always, and they follow them around, taking pictures and asking them intrusive questions. In this case, I couldn’t blame them. Her father gives her a brooch that her mother owned, in a great big case, and she doesn’t want it, but he drops it in her shopping bags. So she finds it, and shoves it under her pillow.
I’d have been happy for Jake to send her away, give her money and support his baby. Despite a couple of sizzling sex scenes, I didn’t feel the love. I didn’t witness them falling in love in the first place, or rather, Alicia falling for Jake, and I never thought that Jake felt more than responsibility for Alicia, despite his declaration of love at the end. I love books set in New Orleans, but I never got a real feel for the place, despite constant geographical references and the occasional “cher.”
The story read flat for me, as if the author was fulfilling an obligation to write it, rather than getting into her characters. It does happen that way sometimes, when characters don’t gel or don’t work, and if the pressure is on, then the book has to be written regardless. It read like one of those.
Grade: D
Summary:
It had been sheer madness to bed Alicia Butler. The beauty’s father had cost Jake’s company millions and any association with her would surely create troubling tabloid fodder. But Alicia was pregnant with his baby and he would not walk away from this responsibility. Their only option was marriage and the hope that the gossip would dwindle…even as their passion reignited.
Read an excerpt.
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