My Rating: ✩✩✩✩✩
Stephanie Archer is one of my "always read" authors so this new book was greeted with much excitement. As always, Archer lived up to the hype.
This fun and spicy contemporary does rely on a little bit of suspension of disbelief. The idea of meeting a coworker during your side hustle of sex work isn't completely out of the realm, but the "I will pay you enough to make all your problems go away completely unprompted and we are all cool with it" is a bit of a stretch. That said, I don't read romance because it is real life. It is exactly this tropey opener that makes the whole book fun.
After that, the book is exactly what's on the tin. Some fake-relationship/relationship of convenience classics come into play. The characters' chemistry is solid enough to make the story work and the inevitable catching of feelings feels authentic and not wedged in for the sake of an HEA. What makes the book work beyond just an excellent use of favorite tropes however is the yearning. Even though we only see the FMC's POV, you can feel the MMC's yearning just rolling off the pages. The whole set-up feels way less unreasonable when you see it as the desperation of a besotted man. Love everything about this.
All together a great contemporary that hits all the right spots for lovers of the genre.
Published on 8 December 2026 by Ballantine
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