A-

Temporary Wife Temptation

I love tropes. I could talk tropes all the live long day. But you know what I really love, when there is a trope trifecta…

Office romance?
Fake relationship?
Marriage of convenience?

Tick! Tick! TICK! This book literally ticks all the boxes.

Garrett Song, the man about to be announced as CEO of Hansol Incorporated (his family’s company) is super-hot, super-driven and super-not-into-marriage. Garrett’s grandmother, the overbearing matriarch, has other ideas though and has arranged a marriage for Garrett. Unsurprisingly, he has no interest in following his grandmother’s orders on this front, so he declares with confidence that he’s already in a relationship. Enter…

Natalie Sobol is the Director of Human Resources at Hansol Incorporated. Natalie’s sister, Traci, passed away and her last wish was for Natalie to adopt Traci’s daughter, Sophie. But there is a spanner in the works. Sophie is currently in the care of her father’s parents. Natalie wants to improve her chances of getting full custody by getting married. Apparently, ‘the system’ prefers married couples.

You see where this is going, right? Right! But, it gets even better because with their first meeting we’re already seeking BIG SPARKS. Garrett hasn’t signed the required paperwork for his position at the company, and according to Natalie, it’s time for a reckoning. Natalie marches into his office and issues a written warning for not conforming to company rules. That this is the man that will take the reins as CEO is irrelevant. Fair is fair and Garrett isn’t playing the game. BAM! Fireworks! The attraction is INSTANT and palpable. And to make it even better, the two have unwittingly been presented with the solution to their individual conundrums: each other.

So I’m bouncing up and down while writing this review (and you can probably tell based on my liberal use of uppercase letters), but there is a minus. I devoured this book in a matter of hours (full disclosure: we had just entered lockdown and I needed comfort, so I spent the day in bed reading this book) but…sometimes the story seems ever so slightly forced. There are sometimes simpler solutions available for the problems the characters are faced with, but my deep, abiding love for the tropes in this book had me closing my eyes to these simpler, shorter, less messy avenues. In this book’s defense, I will say that while the trope is a classic, this is mostly a fresh take on it, and some of the characters’ choices genuinely surprised me.

There’s a reason I’m mad about tropes. I like to follow a familiar groove, one that hits all the emotional high points that I need. While these old favourites feel slightly stiff in places, overall, it was just the kind of emotional rollercoaster I love being on.

– Lara

Much more than he bargained for…

“You want me to find you a wife?”

“No. I want you to be my wife.”

Garrett Song is this close to taking the reins of his family’s LA fashion empire…until the Song matriarch insists he marry her handpicked bride first. To block her matchmaking, he recruits Natalie Sobol to pose as his wife. She needs a fake spouse as badly as he does. But when passion burns down their chaste agreement, the flames could destroy them all…