Marriage of Inconvenience by Penny Reid
Knitting in the City, #7
Romance Comedy
March 6, 2017
Self Published

Reviewed By Tori

Favorite Quote: “Trust me that I want every part of you.”

“What if parts of me are messy? Or ugly?”

“Parts of you are ugly and messy. I still want you. I want the ugly and the beautiful and everything in between. You don’t pick and choose the parts of a person you want.”

Kat Turner aka Kathleen Tyson needs to marry and marry fast. A billionaire heiress to one of the largest pharmaceutical empires in the US, her cousin has decided to have her declared incompetent in order to seize her fortune and her shares in the company.

Enter Dan ‘the Security Man’. Dan O’Malley, the head of security for Cypher Systems, has always been attracted to Kat but an awkward night in Vegas convinced him they weren’t quite right for one another. When she needs his help though, he jumps at the chance to spend more time with her.

Fake Engagement?
Check.
Fake Ring?
Check.
Fake Marriage?
Check.
Fake feelings?

Ummmm….uncheck?

Marriage of Inconvenience is the 7th book in Penny Reid’s hilarious relationship-centric  Knitting in the City series. These comedic contemporaries blend outrageous humor, eccentric characters, and sexy, crazy plots to produce an addictive story you won’t want to put down. Her characters are delightfully flawed and crafted with just the right amount of realism to allow for the reader to easily connect with them. Reid’s chosen trope of a marriage of convenience is a delight once she applies her magic, leaving readers with some action-packed scenes, sweet emotional revelations, and smoking hot chemistry.

Set in New York, Reid wrangles two fan favorites, Dan and Kat, on page together to finally hash out their feelings for one another and get to the bottom of what happened in Vegas a couple years ago. Kat aka Kathleen has not had an easy life despite her wealth.  Both her parents are incapacitated from mental illness- her mother suffers from schizophrenia and her father suffers from Alzheimer’s. She ran away at age fifteen in an effort to be seen and got caught up in drugs and stealing. She eventually cleaned herself up, got her GED, and works as an executive assistant while going for her degree in business while taking care of her parents’ company.

The previous books in the series has shown Kat as rather quiet and mild-mannered. In here, she sheds that persona slowly and the real Kat emerges. I liked Kat but it was hard to relate to her. She is a bit of a martyr though once you get to know her childhood you can see why.  I enjoyed watching her emerge from her shell and learning to accept that everyone makes mistakes and it’s okay to screw up. She just wants to matter to someone. To have them love her for Kat-not Kathleen the heiress. My heart hurt for her when I realized just how confining her childhood must have been as her father waited for her to show signs of her mother’s illness. Reid’s foray into mental illness is tasteful and I appreciated she doesn’t attempt to use it as a plot device or a way to manipulate an emotional response.

Dan is probably one of my favorite secondary characters and I’m so glad he finally got his day in the sun. Quinn’s right-hand man since the beginning, he has dossiers on all of Janie’s friends so he’s always known about the heiress in hiding though he didn’t know the whys. A handsome, loyal,  dangerous man who loves his mama and drops the f-bomb like confetti, I laughed out loud so much as Dan’s personality came alive and at his reasons for avoiding Kat after Vegas.

The blending of the romance and the battle for Kat’s freedom is a delicate balance that Reid masters perfectly. The sexual chemistry that throbs between Kat and Dan only adds to the overall tension as you watch them try to keep one step ahead of her cousin and a surprising ally. Both Dan and Kat have dirty impure thoughts (YAY!!!) I loved how Kat waxes poetic on how attractive and biteable some of Dan’s external parts are. Various familiar faces are all an integral part of the landscape in here and help in any and all ways. Dan’s mama is a delight and a master of parental guilt. I loved his descriptions of his family. Sandra always cracks me up with her inappropriate questions while her husband keeps hacking the free world out of boredom. Elizabeth and Nick are apparently still going kinky and strong while other couples continue to expand their lives.

The ending is an action-packed double crossing mashup of the outrageous and ridiculous with a healthy dose of laughter and sheer brilliance. I certainly hope Reid spins off again and maybe takes a harder look at the O’ Malleys. Eleanor and Seamus (book one) are definitely two characters I’d love to see in their own stories. A fifteen-year epilogue kind of threw me off but it was nice to see the second generation and their hobbies.

Grade: B

Previous Knitting in the City Reviews
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Friends Without Benefits
Neanderthal Seeks Human

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