Tag: marriage of convenience

Review

✍🏻 Professor Romance’s 4.5 ⭐️ Review: Rebecca Jenshak’s Wild Ever After, a Wildcat Hockey romance ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: 4.5 ⭐️

Tropes: marriage of convenience; cinnamon roll male character; hockey romance; sports romance

By my estimation, there are several ways to entice one’s readers. For me, formulate a romance with a cinnamon roll main male character to fall for an untrusting, somewhat neurotic main female character using the mechanism of a fake marriage or some type of forced proximity. If you add some sports romance to it, more power to the author. This is precisely the genius of Rebecca Jenshak’s Wild Ever After. For me, Jenshak’s newest story in her Wildcat Hockey series is my favorite thus far because Declan is a dream, an unassuming thoughtful hero who adores his heroine, Jade, beyond a measure she can understand. From their chemistry to the struggles of their marriage of convenience to the community of friends to which they belong, Wild Ever After entices its reader.

Highlights:

Declan’s growing adoration for Jade inspires her to begin to trust a significant other. Honestly, Declan doesn’t have to do much to build this trust other than see Jade and care for her in ways that her mother wasn’t always good at doing. When he makes his home her home, it’s a pure swoon fest.

Declan’s background should have made him “hard”; instead, it allows him to grow an EQ that makes him the perfect cinnamon roll hero.

Jade’s journey from needing status to realizing her favorite “space” is with Declan. Jade begins the story chasing “clout,” a common societal goal; yet, as she researches how people love and she is loved by Declan, she recognizes her true happiness. She moves from cold to hot with Declan as she struggles with finding this truth. In the end, Jenshak places her exactly where she should be, making for a story that makes you sigh with happiness.

The community of Wildcat hockey friends continues to entertain in this book. For one, Jenshak gives us updates, but she also hints at future stories. By the end of Wild Ever After, you know the next book’s main characters. Even more, the support of this community adds layers to Jade and Declan’s romance. 

From start to finish, Rebecca Jenshak’s Wild Ever After reminds her readers of the difficulty of love. Both Declan and Jade must learn to trust and become vulnerable with each other after pasts filled with reasons to avoid these. In the end, these two are fated, and their happy ending is exactly what we expect of romancelandia. 

In love and romance,

Professor A

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Review

✍🏻 Professor Romance’s 4.5 ⭐️ Review: Devney Perry’s Jasper Vale, a The Edens romance ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: 4.5 ⭐️

Tropes: fake marriage; marriage of convenience; Vegas wedding; opposites attract; grump/sunshine; wealthy MMC; found family; romantic suspense elements

I’ve been sitting on my review for Devney Perry’s newest book in her The Edens series, Jasper Vale. Trying to find the words to express my adoration for this story isn’t easy because it’s a story that feels a bit like a departure for Perry. Yes, this is a Vegas mistaken wedding turned fake marriage. It’s a common trope, but Perry’s books sparkle, by my estimation, from start to finish. And Jasper Vale reads grittier. In fact, I think it’s one of her $exiest books in that her main characters, Jasper and Eloise, simply can’t help themselves around each other. $ex comes first for this couple out of a pure chemical connection. Jasper is bossy and super-alpha, and it’s titillating and $exy in all the best romancelandia ways. And it feels so different from Perry’s usual fare, at least with recent stories. I loved Jasper and Eloise’s struggles. 

For one, they are opposites. Jasper’s life is one big secret for everyone. It’s not healthy in the least, and it informs how he responds to Eloise’s family in the face of their surprising marriage. This is unlike the other partners of the Edens who fit so seamlessly into the Eden family. And I liked the trepidation and discomfort of his first meeting because he responds to them out of a protectiveness and compassion for Eloise as well as the experiences of his past. Jasper is one of the darkest Perry characters, I believe. 

Eloise is the sunshine to Jasper’s grump. She is his light. Perry puts her through her paces in this story as she must mine for Jasper’s secret gold, surrounded by an almost impenetrable wall. For every step forward, Eloise finds herself taking a step back. This tango both wrings out the heart of the readers and sets up the anticipation of the eventuality of their relationship: pure love. It takes much of Jasper Vale to get to this point with quite a bit of heartache woven into the story. 

So Jasper Vale reads like this: surprise, $ex, silence, separation, $ex, a building of a nugget of vulnerability, confusion, more $ex, silence, $ex, secrets revealed, deeper involvement, $ex, drama, reconciliation, healing, abiding love. Or at least something like this with more $ex added in. 

Perry’s Jasper Vale is a revelation to me. I still think she needs to work on the last 10% of her stories because she deftly develops her plot but the endings always seem rushed, at least until the epilogue and bonus epilogue. Those are always pure gold; however, the falling action and resolution of the inciting incident(s) of her plot points always read underdeveloped to me. Or maybe I want to sit longer with characters like Eloise and Jasper. Bottom line: Devney Perry’s Jasper Vale is MY favorite The Edens romance.

In love and romance,


Professor A

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✍🏻 Professor Romance’s 4 ⭐️ Review: Corinne Michaels’s Give Me Love ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Tropes: second chance romance; friends to lovers; military romance; feisty FMC; law enforcement MMC; romantic suspense

Corinne Michaels’s Give Me Love takes her readers back to Rose Canyon, the setting for her book, Help Me Remember. It follows one of the four friends of this series, Emmett, the town sheriff. The story begins where Help Me Remember left off with Emmett’s surprise marriage to his friend, Blakely. From there, Blakely and Emmett struggle to find their bearing as Emmett wants Blakely to finally agree to a divorce while Blakely works through feelings she wants to deny. Give Me Love is a cat-and-mouse chase between two people destined to love each other when one of them fears it. Will Emmett win Blakely over? Give Me Love ends in a HEA, so I’ll let you decide. 

For me, Michaels’s newest Rose Canyon story’s highlight is the rollercoaster journey of Blakely and Emmett. It’s Emmett’s patience in the face of Blakely’s fear. It’s Emmett’s attraction to Blakely and his willingness to act upon it that finally helps her overcome her worry. It’s his dedication to Blakely that makes this aspect of Give Me Love the best part of the book. For me, Emmett wins over Michaels’s readers in contrast to Blakely’s stubbornness in admitting her feelings for him. This is what won me over to this story. 

My frustration with Give Me Love is its storyline. There is a pacing issue here, one that detracts from the book. Additionally, uneven characterizations confuse and create a consistency issue for both Emmett and Blakely. In moments, when I should have felt emotionally connected to Michaels’s characters, I wasn’t, and that’s a problem for this reader. 

As far as continuing the overarching story of the Rose Canyon series, Give Me Love continues it, and I’m intrigued by and ready for Holden’s story, teased at the end of this book. 

In love and romance,

Professor A