Romancing the Billionaire by Jessica Clare (Billionaire Boys Club #5)
Released: November 4, 2014
Contemporary Romance
Intermix
Reviewed by Mandi
I was disappointed in this one which bums me out because this series has been a lot of fun. The heroine and I did not get along in this book. Her lack of communication with the hero and her wishy-washy self-made me have a frowny face for most of the book.
When Violet’s famous archaeologist father passes away, he leaves her an envelope with a clue about something. That something Violet could care less about. Barely speaking to him in the last ten years, her father was always more concerned over his latest dig and adventure, than with his daughter. Violet wants to just get his estate settled and move on with her life. But she won’t be that lucky. Back when she was nineteen, on a dig with her father, she met Jonathan Lyons. At that time, Jonathan’s family were unsuccessfully trying to get into the automobile industry. Jonathan, an adventurer at heart, was in his glory helping her father on his latest dig. He also fell in love with Violet, and she fell for him. They had a wild, passionate love affair, in which Violet ended up getting pregnant.
Let me stop here because this part really bothers me. Violet finds out she is pregnant and instead of telling Jonathan this news, she asks him to leave the dig, go back to the states and settle down with her. In which his response is, uh….no. He is nineteen, and while he likes Violet a lot, he doesn’t want to go play house. Violet is devastated and leaves him a note that at the very end tells him she is pregnant. A note he never gets. Violet ends up miscarrying the pregnancy and carrying anger towards Jonathan for the next ten years. Jonathan goes on to turn his family’s business around and is now a billionaire.
Now to the present, Jonathan also receives a mysterious envelope from Violet’s father, which leads him to Violet, a school teacher. Jonathan has been sponsoring a dig and he is sure her father stole something from the site. Now with some clues he has left behind, he wants Violet to come with him on another adventure. He has been under the assumption she was married these ten years, but he was wrong. To get her to come along with him, he promises her school a ton of money, if she goes with him. Feeling blackmailed, Violet agrees.
So, I’m already not loving the fact that Violet didn’t really tell Jonathan that she was pregnant yet has carried massive anger around with her for ten years.
Maybe it wasn’t entirely Jonathan’s fault that he hadn’t come after her. Maybe she hadn’t made her feelings clear enough. Hell, maybe she hadn’t been clear enough about the baby. At nineteen, dancing around the topic of marriage and family and then sending a note had seemed obvious. Ten years later, it just seemed childish. Maybe she hadn’t let him in long enough to have him see the real girl underneath all the armor, the scared, lonely pregnant teenager who just wanted a family of her own that wouldn’t drink or disappear on her.
Or maybe she didn’t say the actual words, “I’m pregnant.” Oh Violet. You frustrate me so.
In present day, once Jonathan finds out she was pregnant, he feels awful. Yet I was still annoyed by Violet’s actions and reactions. She gives in and starts a physical relationship only to then regret it.
No matter how good he was at sex now, fooling around with him could only lead to more hurt. She needed to tell him that they couldn’t do this again. Not if they wanted to maintain their fragile, newly rebuilt friendship.
But as she pulled her shirt over her breasts, she felt suddenly so very tired of the walls she kept erected to keep herself safe. Couldn’t she just relax for one day and not worry about emotions? Couldn’t she just enjoy?
Violet pulled her pants on and lay back in the seat, thinking.
She’d tell him in the morning, when both of them had clear minds and a few hours distance. Tonight, she’d allow herself to wallow in pleasure for a bit.
But then only TEN pages later, after she asks for space, she reacts this way:
It was clear Jonathan wasn’t pursuing her anymore. If she wanted him, she’d have to pursue him and make it obvious that she desired him. She’d have to put her heart out on the line and offer it up to him, not knowing if he was even attracted to her anymore. Maybe he was content with their now-friendship.
Violet would have to be the one taking all the risks.
Violet is so consumed with…Violet. I got so tired of her. She did not communicate at all with him. Maybe as a nineteen year old, she was too immature to communicate but now at 30, let’s go girl. It felt like forced angst to me.
Rating: C-
P.S. The next book is called The Billionaire and the Virgin. Totally reading that.
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