Claimed by the Rogue Billionaire by Trish Wylie

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Title: Claimed by the Rogue Billionaire
Author: Trish Wylie
Published by: Harlequin Presents
Release Date: January 1, 2009
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genres: Romance, Contemporary
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2021 Backlist Reader Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo
My rating:

Blurb:

Heiress Ashling Fitzgerald has come home determined to prove that she's changed. Secretly she wants to make amends--with the tall, dark housekeeper's son she left behind. But he's not the boy she once knew--Gabriel Burke is now an infamous billionaire!

Gabe thinks Ashling is still incredibly sexy. He doesn't want her apologies. Instead he wants her in his bed--he wants revenge.... But once he's got it, Gabe discovers he's so hungry for more....

4 stars — Hey look!  I hadn’t read this one before!  For some reason I guess I assumed I’d read all the Harlequin Presents books I kept…I wonder what other ones are up there.

ANYWAYS.  Trish Wylie is totally making my faves list.  She knows how to take normal Presents tropes and update them for the here and now.  We still get misunderstandings, and hurt feelings, and rags to riches and all that, but we get them in such a way that I still love the characters at the end of it.

Ash broke my heart…I ached for her insecurity, and her need to make things right.  I kinda wish I’d gotten more pieces of her past earlier in the book, but it is what it is.  I loved the sass, and the bravery, and the need to make the people she loves happy.

Gabe was on the verge of being a jerk, but you did eventually get to see how he interpreted things…and not only that, but in his head I felt his confusion, and how he was struggling with feelings from the past versus feelings now.  He was bossy and domineering, in the interests of protection…but thankfully Ash called him on it.

Even though I’m not too into enemies to lovers, this one rode the line well.  You could feel the feelings underneath, and that it was more than just hate driving them both.  And they were pretty fun together once they started pushing those boundaries.

The thing that gets me with Ms. Wylie’s writing is that I find myself laughing at the quips in this one.  They feel natural, her characters feel more real, everything is just that step up.