This HaBO request is from Happy Shiny Starlet. Spoilers for the description ahead:
I hope you can help me with this puzzle!
This book has been on the back of my mind for a while now. This was published in the last 3 or 4 years and it ended in a cliffhanger. I don’t like waiting for a resolution, so I set it aside (mentally) until the next book, but I cannot remember if that was ever published…and I cannot check because I don’t remember the title not the author!
I do remember the start and the end.
The heroine is stuck in an elevator with a stranger. They talk for hours. She opens up to him and a relationship develops over the following months. I suspect the plot revolves around about her and a big business (inheritance?) and some family secret. In the last pages of the book, they are getting married. After the ceremony, she overhears something that reveals to her that he has lied throughout their relationship. The man she has just married has used a false name. He had secretly targeted her from the start, pretending to being a stranger but already knowing all about her. She writes him a note and runs away.
To be continued…
Oh boy. Does any recognize this cliffhanger?
I don’t know the answer but this setup rings a bell. Any chance the second book was reviewed here a while ago?
The start of Jasmine Guillory’s THE WEDDING DATE starts with the couple trapped in an elevator, but nothing else matched the description. That might be what @Laura is thinking of.
I too had such a feeling of deja fun on this. I really thought I had seen something like this here before but for me it wasn’t the elevator it was finding out the secret at wedding.
It sounds a little like “Mister Moneybags” by Vi Keeland. They’re stuck on an elevator and he lies to her about who he is. But not a cliffhanger.
Laura Kaye’s *Hearts in Darkness* and *Love in the Light* match the elevator part, and the two-part story aspect. It’s been a while since I read them, but I don’t remember the stuff about fake names. (They’re worth reading anyway, though!)
Oh man. This is bugging the back of my brain, but I can’t pull it to the front…
@slimlove – yeah, the Laura Kaye Hearts in Darkness novella didn’t have the false name thing, and at the end they don’t get married (the novella was almost completely the time in the elevator and they just met). It did have a satisfying HFN without a cliffhanger. Thanks for mentioning that one, I never did read the second novella and had really enjoyed Hearts in Darkness!
Is there any chance that the elevator scenes and the wedding scenes are separate? It’s the wedding part that I feel like I should remember.
Following!
This reminds me of something I read, but like others, I am having trouble dredging it up. I have a whisp of a memory of a story like this where the relationship is fairly spicy. If that fits your memory of your book I will try to find what book it is I am remembering. If it is more of a romantic comedy sort of relationship, then I am way off.
Happy Shiny Starlet here:
Thank you Smart Bitches, for posting this HABO 🙂
Thank you for all the suggestions, but no luck so far 🙁
@Karen: as far as I can remember, it is definitely not a romantic comedy.
The 2 main characters bond in the elevator at the start of the book.
At the end of the book, the main female character overhears an older female relative of his (aunt? step-mother?) who calls him by a different name than the one he has used with her. She knows now that he has manipulated her all along for some nefarious reason (vengeance? family or business feud?) She writes a note to let him know she knows he lied to her, steps in the elevator and leaves during her wedding reception.
This is still bugging me!
This sounds a tiny bit like Lisa Kleypas’s Blue-Eyed Devil
This kind of reminds me of a book where there are the brothers who all live in the building and they’re secret billionaires and one of them tricks this girl into thinking they just met, there are also some cousins involved a close family and it seems like maybe they met in an elevator he definitely already knew her but pretended he didn’t, can’t think of the name of it though LOL
This feels almost Sandra Brown-ish to me. But hers usually aren’t cliffhangers.
Sorry, not much help, I know.
This isn’t the book, but it reminds me of Linda Howard’s Almost Forever. Could be a rec if you like the corporate espionage stuff!
OK, I just picked up Driving in Neutral by Sandra Antonelli and the blurb describes an elevator meet-cute, so I thought I’d just toss it out there. I don’t think there’s a sequel, but this is just the second book I’ve started by this author. In fact—full disclosure here—I may have peeked at the last couple of pages, and the ending is definitely ambiguous. Also, there is a POed heroine and a hero with an apparent nom d’amour.
Sarah Mayberry also has a trapped in the elevator scene that I quite liked, but it’s a Harlequin Blaze and the ending is a pretty hot HEA with no sequel. I think it’s called Can’t Get Enough.
Happy Shiny Starlet here:
Thank you for the suggestion @PamG , but it isn’t Driving in Neutral
I’ll keep looking…