This was a BR with my friend, Heather, who is the person who got me into Millie Adams' books in the first place. I often find the more recent Harlequins to be bland (the old ones were so much more dramatic and fun), but Adams does a good job with somewhat in-depth characterization and I like how she gives all of her characters these (mild) sexual kinks that complement their personalities and even serve to further the storyline and emotional connections between the characters in some way. I even felt like the heroine in this one was sort of implied to have a sort of humiliation kink, but it was buried deep. Maybe they decided that was too racy, I don't know.
This book starts out with the heroine, Morgan, hiding from her long-term boyfriend in lingerie. This is because on the night she finally planned to sleep with him (she's a virgin) after six months of no sex, she finds him cheating on her with another woman. She escapes off the balcony and ends up in the room of the boyfriend's stern and uptight brother, Constantine, who she has always secretly had a crush on. Faster than you can say, "She chose the wrong brother," they're doing it, and X number of weeks later, she's pregnant... with twins!
Normally I hate pregnancy romances, but I feel like this one was done better than most. The heroine doesn't set up a doctor appointment in her ignorance and kind of hates it when it does happen (girl, same). She's VERY nervous about motherhood because her own mother's pregnancy was unplanned, and she spent most of her childhood and adulthood feeling like a burden her mother never wanted. Even though Constantine proposes marriage immediately-- because his family has been hit with tragedy after tragedy and is currently out two children, they are very much Team Baby-- she has real concerns that being in fatherhood for duty's sake alone will cause her kids to feel that same kind of resentment.
I also liked the dialogues about gold-digging wives, and how money does make things comfortable for people, especially if they grew up with less or none, so the shame and the hatred for those types of women doesn't really make sense, because it's dumb to expect people to go into a relationship with money and pretend it doesn't exist or it doesn't make their lives easier. The conversations about filial expectations and responsibility were also surprisingly deep for a romance that had the hero kissing the heroine' stomach and saying "MINE" while comparing her to a fertility goddess, so you know, wow, real emotional stakes and development in a Harley pregnancy romance. I never would have thunk it.
Obviously, since I'm not usually keen on these types of romances, I have thoughts. I've only read Adams's historicals prior to this and I wondered if she was working on this one in between them, because the language she chose was very odd. I kept having to remind myself I wasn't reading a historical with words like "scoundrel" and "delectable" being used, and I think at one point the hero's dad says something like "he should taste of the heroine's beauty." Lol, okay. The heroine also kept trailing off into random elipses and there were multiple stilted phrases in the canned dialogue that just had me rolling my eyes, which is a shame because apart from that, the writing wasn't bad.
If you're not into pregnancy romances, I wouldn't recommend this because it is very much a theme. But if you need to do it for a category challenge or something, this is definitely a lesser evil. I mean, she took a trope that normally wants to make me pour ice on my head and made it almost likable. I'm curious to check out some of her other contemporaries and see if she has the same writing tics or if this was a one-off, but so far I think I like her historicals better. I'll def read more from this author, though.
2.5 out of 5 stars
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