Tabs’ review of The Billionaire’s Favorite Mistake (Billionaires and Bridesmaids, Book 4) by Jessica Clare
Contemporary Romance published by Intermix 21 Jun 16
Jessica Clare returns to her Billionaires and Bridesmaids series with some unrequited love, some lousy drunken sex, an accidental pregnancy, and some Hugh-Hefner-Girls-Next-Door-esque shenanigans. Professional event planner Greer has been mooning over her friend and former college roommate Asher for many a year. When she decides that she’s finally going to make her move, things go south really fast and she decides that she is actually totally over his crap and is completely washing her hands of one Asher Sutton. An accidental pregnancy kind of throws the wrench in those plans, though!
The rest of the plot involves Asher chasing down Greer because he doesn’t understand why she’s freezing him out. He’s told they had sex by their mutual friends but doesn’t remember it at all, so he’s stymied by her reaction. Not being able to let that lie, he flies out to ambush her at a party so that he can talk to her face to face. When he realizes that she’s pregnant with his child, he decides to get all Machiavellian on her ass and cook up a ridiculously elaborate forced proximity scheme with her terrible father. Greer will have to come around if they’re always together, right? On the one hand, I rather enjoy the idea of a “If we hang out she’ll realizes she likes me again” plan. I mean, it’s kind of sweet, actually. On the other hand, it’s just crazy dumb. Come on, Asher, you couldn’t predict this sort of thing was going to bite you in the ass later? Of course it will. These things always do!
Both Asher and Greer are uneven and somewhat unsympathetic characters to me. Asher’s got a bad case of living-in-the-past syndrome that he desperately needs to get over. He got burned once by a woman and is still hung up on the whole thing. Greer’s got a case of butthurt that she desperately needs to get over as well. Her grand plans of declaring her unrequited love didn’t work out the way she wanted them to and she doesn’t handle that well. Neither character is particularly endearing.
For me, this book also has somewhat troubling issues with consent. Completely sober Greer has hasty sex with blackout drunk Asher in the very beginning of the story. She doesn’t know just how wasted he is until after the sex is over, but she definitely knew he wasn’t sober when things started. Yet Asher is painted as the bad guy (by Greer, by their friends, by himself – by everyone, essentially) for being a jerk to Greer and giving her a bad first sexual experience. I’m really not on board with this at all and find the whole thing pretty troubling. I wanted to see Greer take more responsibility for her own actions.
This was not as smashing a success for me as the previous Billionaires and Bridesmaids books were. I didn’t really care much for either main character. I did rather enjoy the parts where the outside world kind of fell away and Greer and Asher could actually just spend time together and be sweet and cute together. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough of that. Also, I really really wanted someone to set Greer’s dad’s hair on fire or push him into a pool or something. Boy, was that guy a jerk. Even though this didn’t work for me, I’m still immensely looking forward to the last two books in this series. Bring on the gamer girl and the big wedding!
Grade: C
Summary:
Greer has always been there for Asher, but she wishes she could break through her shyness and show how much she truly loves him. But after a steamy, mindless fling at Hunter and Gretchen’s engagement party, Greer finds herself tossed aside and forced to admit that you can’t love someone who doesn’t acknowledge you exist.
It’s a shame he got her pregnant.
After his fiancée betrayed him and tanked his business in one fell swoop, Asher has spent his time trying to rebuild his wealth and forget the past. But he doesn’t understand why Greer blew him off after their night together—until he catches a glimpse of her belly.
Now Asher is willing to do whatever it takes to convince Greer she belongs with him. And he’s very skilled at the art of persuasion.
No excerpt available.
Other books in this series:
