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My Review:Title: Bedded for Passion, Purchased for Pregnancy
Author: Carol Marinelli
Published by: Harlequin Presents
Release Date: December 1, 2009
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2022 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2022 Bookish Resolutions Presents, Lenoreo's 2022 COYER Spring
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon
My rating:
Blurb:When Zarios D'Amilo meets Emma Hayes again, she is no longer the awkward teenager who tried to kiss him, but a beautiful, confident woman. Now he wants her!
To claim his inheritance, this untamed tycoon must curb his wild ways. He needs a convenient fiancée, and Emma needs a million dollars. So Zarios seizes his opportunity—he will have her! But passion soon leads to pregnancy, and suddenly, the stakes are higher....
2.5 stars — I mean…it was easy reading. But wow, I’m really not the reader I was 10-15 years ago.
Emma was okay. I appreciated that she did try to stand up for herself on occasion, and even succeeded. I wish we’d gotten to see more of her life, her painting, her passions. I did NOT appreciate the way she would blow up and say mean things back to Zarios to protect herself. Not a fan.
Her family was kind of atrocious. I do get that it was complicated, and there were great moments, but it felt like the author was trying to convince us of the good parts without showing examples. And she never gets resolution with them about a lot of it. No apologies from Jake really either. It was odd, because the author was trying to tackle gambling addiction, and some parts felt right…but other parts felt sensationalized. Especially given Jake seemed abusive otherwise…but that was just a background story.
Zarios was…slightly less than okay. I know he had some complicated things going on in the background, and nothing is black and white, but he was a pretty big jerk about a lot of important things. And I didn’t really feel like we got to see him grow and figure things out with his Mom and his childhood and his relationship with his dad. That’s one of the problems with these short Harlequins, you don’t really get the depth. Which kind of makes me wish that it wasn’t in the background then, because it’s unsatisfying.
I’m starting to wonder what attracted me to Ms. Marinelli’s books so much back then. What’s coming to the forefront now is abusive and dickish behavior from both MCs in a lot of cases. I might need to start DNFing some of these if I start noticing the pattern. They’re not horrible or anything, definitely readable…but what is my time worth, you know?
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