Kelly Bradley needed a way to pay for her dream: going to law school. When she heard that the powerful Jack Sutton needed a wife to retain his position as CEO of Sutton Capital, she walked into his office posing as his girlfriend. All she wanted is 145K, enough to pay for going to law school and she'll stay married to Jack for a year. Jack was surprised, then mad, then delighted, when he realized Kelly really is honest, and they fell for each other. But Jack's aunt is determined to expose their marriage as a fraud through any means necessary...This book was good right up to about midpoint. Then the climax basically came out of nowhere. While the prologue did hint at what happens, it really made no sense. Aunt's opposition to Jack also made no sense either.
Let me give the summary before I spoil everything.
Category: Contemporary Romance
Primary Plot: Marriage of convenience
TL;DR: Kelly, needing money for law school, got fake-married to Jack Sutton, who needed a wife to access his mother's shares to retain his CEO position, but there are problems...
Overall rating: 2/5
Anyway... It's not really a spoiler that the book involves a kidnapping when the prologue featured the FMC, Kelly, bound and gagged in a room she didn't recognize, but how the story ends is a spoiler.
COMING UP
I TOLD YOU SO
Basically, some human traffickers decided to nab women, apparently specifically selected women, to be auctioned off, and somehow Kelly had been chosen. That's actually not the problem. The problem is what happens to the rescue.
The bad guys stashed the women in a building where "the third floor is empty, under construction... the floor is locked."
How does one lock a floor? And if there are people living downstairs, how did the kidnappers move FIVE unconscious women up there without anyone seeing?
Next, Jack Sutton himself, and his security buddy Chad (who runs Sutton Investigations) who had been listening to 911 calls decided to check out a water leak, where Kelly's sister insisted was done by Kelly because that used to watch this child safety video about stranger abduction.
Police radio scanner is possible, but 911 calls live? How many channels? That'd require some serious hacking and may be illegal. But let's give them benefit of doubt. The problem is Jack going along with Chad, wearing tactical vests and pulling out guns. While I have no problem believing Chad, working investigations, could be a trained operator, it was never even HINTED that Jack the MMC owned a gun, much less can operate with Chad at a tactical level.
The duo managed to sneak up to the building, up to the third floor, where the lock was picked. When two suspicious characters came out they knocked them out and dragged them back down to the first floor and called in the FBI.
Uh, the 911 call said the floor was LOCKED. Hello! Also, that's assault and battery. Even if they perform "citizen's arrest" on these guys, and FBI just taking their word for it? A bit too convenient. But hey, maybe Chad's got some serious connections and they can handwave it away.
But really, the main problem is they sudden made Jack an accomplished operator who can do a silent takedown on a bad guy in the last pages of the book. This is basically a deus ex machina ending. Sorry, NOT buying it.
