Laura Burton, $0.99
Contemporary Romance, 2019
Who Wants to Love a Billionaire?… seriously, what kind of question is that? Whoever says no to that question deserves to be poor for the rest of their lives, because come on, we are talking about billionaires people, billionaires. So long as there is no messy prenup in the scene, I am still the winner even when the love burns out, because divorce will make me very wealthy indeed. Just ask Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife. So do I want to love a billionaire? Oh yes, just point me to that guy and get out of my way.
Yes, I’ll marry him, even if his name is Harold Jackson.
Oh, and the heroine of this story is Julie Andrews. Save your eye rolls until I tell you that she’s also a talented seamstress that is nonetheless on the poor side. Not the kind of poor that forces her to sell her honey for money or anything like that, of course, it’s the cute kind of “poor” that makes readers go, “Aw, she’s so disarmingly charming!” instead of “That poor thing is going to be stricken with syphilis soon, right?”.
Her good friend, sorry, only friend in the whole wide New York is starting a matchmaking business, and it just so happens that one of the clients is Harold. Hence, this friend needs Julie to play the part of the date, because there is nothing more fun that courting a potential lawsuit from a guy that can afford to sic an army of lawyers on one without batting an eyelid. Hence, the dance begins. There is some mild suspense element, but nothing too serious or dramatic to put our main characters in any sense of danger. Plus, the identity of the villain is a predictable one, as there is only one character here that is portrayed as a threat to the romance.
So, this one. Well, on the bright side, the author doesn’t overplay that always-ridiculous “My boyfriend is actually a billionaire, not some working class mensch, and that is the worst thing ever!” nonsense that romance heroines just love to whip up for some reason, so Julie doesn’t appear too compromised in the brainpower department as a result. The main characters are generally sweet and likable, and the story on the whole is alright if I overlooked the silly premise that threw Harold and Julie together in the first place. All in all, there is nothing particularly remarkable about this story, but there is nothing objectionable either.
Well, aside from one thing: the author practically narrates all her characters’ thoughts and motivations through conversations and expositions, leaving little to the reader’s imagination. The result of this is a story that resembles an overlong exposition dump comprising way too many sentences that are structured in a similar manner. The story isn’t very interesting to read because of this, as every turn of the page reveals yet more actual exposition or conversations that serve as exposition within inverted commas.
At any rate, Who Wants to Love a Billionaire? is alright, but I doubt I will remember much about this one a few days from now.
