Veena’s review of The Marriage Merger (Marriage to a Billionaire, Book 4) by Jennifer Probst
Contemporary Romance published by Gallery Books 30 Jul 13
Shades of Grey seems to have changed the romance landscape in America. It is almost du jour for authors to introduce bondage, erotic spanking and other elements of D/s in their books. While this book certainly contains all these key elements, what really held my interest is the strong sense of family, old-fashioned romance, and clever dialogue.
Jullietta Conte is at the pinnacle of success. She has everything a woman could possibly want, except love and a family of her own. But isn’t love just a fallacy the poets write about? Except her siblings do seem to have successfully found it too. But a love spell is really beyond belief. However, pushed by her sisters she writes down all the qualities she wants of a soul mate and invokes the spell. When nothing happens, she pushes it out of her mind and continues on with her life.
Around the same time, Sawyer Wells comes into her life with a business proposition that will help her realize all her dreams to take her business to a new high and thumb her nose at all the people who look down at a woman making it in a man’s world. For the first time she’s challenged at being able to separate her business self from her needy woman self who craves orgasms, and it seems that Sawyer Wells is just the guy to give them to her.
This innocent woman, who believes she’s frigid and has never owned or felt the need to own a vibrator, is now in the expert hands of a master and yearns for all the naughty things that Sawyer brings into her life – like spankings, handcuffs, toys, and, above all, the permission to shut off her formidable brain and hand over control to Sawyer in the bedroom. Oh, and orgasms. Plenty of them.
I really like Jullietta’s character. She is a dutiful, loving daughter and sister. Family is really important to her. She has compassion and great strength of character, especially in dealings with Wolfe, who is Sawyer’s protégé. And when she decides that her relationship with Sawyer is emotional as well as physical and pulls out all the stops to win him and hold him, I want to cheer her on. I also think the family interactions between Mama Conte and all the siblings, especially the bonding between the girls, is really well presented.
I am always saddened when I read about the horrible things human beings do to other human beings, especially when people who should love, nurture, and protect children fail to do so. However, the resilience of Sawyer’s and Wolfe’s characters as they fight for what’s right, regardless of the wrongs that have been done to them, restores my faith in the goodness that exists at the core of all humans.
This is my first book by this author but by no means do I mean for it to be the last. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and would love to go back and read the other books in the series and look forward to future stories by Ms. Probst.
Grade: B
Summary:
Her sisters have found wedded bliss with their wealthy, wonderful dream men, but not Julietta Conte. She’s stayed on terra firma as top executive of the family’s corporation, La Dolce Famiglia bakery. Work is her passion, and her trendy Milan apartment her sanctuary . . . until Sawyer Wells, a masculine masterpiece in a suit, lures her out of hiding with an irresistible offer: an exclusive partnership with his international chain of boutique hotels.
Julietta’s been burned before—and trusting her brother-in-law’s friend, whose powerful gaze alone has her rethinking the best use of a conference room, is the riskiest proposition. But with a once-in-a-career chance to take the bakery global, will she mix stone-cold business with red-hot seduction
No excerpt available.
Other books in this series:
