A slightly different premise than the usual crime-family-arranged-marriage trope, only because the male wasn’t any more into it than the female. This twist alone kept me listening, despite the painful narration (details below).

However … that’s about all it had going for it. The writing is pretty much 100% telling, no showing, so it made for a very dull book, as excessive telling does. But also … it was very redundant. This could’ve been about 25% of the word-count and said the exact same thing, as everything is just told to the reader multiple times.

I tried to hang in for the whole thing but … between the robotic “narrating” for half of it, the excessive repeating, and all the telling … i just couldn’t do it.

Zero stars, honestly. This is nothing but lazy “writing” (a term I use loosely here).


Audio:
The male was okay, his performed his parts well. - 4 stars for him.
Overall sound quality is great! Professional. - 3 stars for this because:

The female narrator is one of the worst I’ve heard—her parts were extremely painful to listen to. She only dictates the words, much like AI would. This awful to listen to anyway, but even more so in this instance, since it stands out after the male parts. It really dragged the overall product down—I’m not sure why any author or publisher would approve this, unless they just don’t care about the product they put out.

If I could stand to listen to AI-narration, I’d just have Siri or Alexa read my (much cheaper) eBooks to me. Truly awful.

This was just the right amount of spice & intrigue. Set in a world of ruling families and not so above board dealings, we follow a Lancaster and a Constantine pushed into an arranged marriage that might just be what they both need.

The main characters have just enough contempt for their situation and electric chemistry between the two of them to make the story interesting. Left on a cliffhanger, I can't wait to find out what happens with these two.