CBR16 Book 19: "En enda hemlighet" (Falling) by Simona Arhnstedt

Page count: 509 pages

Rating: 4 stars

The readers met both the protagonists in this novel briefly in the first book in the series, En enda natt, which is also where they first ran into each other. 

At the beginning of this book, idealistic doctor Isobel Sørensen is angry and stressed because the organisation she works for most of the year, Medpax, is struggling for funds, and she's becoming convinced that it's her fault. On the previous occasions when she has run into Alexander de la Grip and he's tried to flirt with her (he seems to attempt to charm and flirt with every woman he meets), she has been very rudely dismissive of him. Now she's worried that the pampered playboy has decided to withdraw the annual contribution he used to give Medpax. Her boss doesn't really care what reasons Isobel might have for disliking Alexander, or frankly whether he's the devil himself. She orders Isobel to arrange a meeting with him, and be polite, pleasant and make sure he starts donating money again. 

As it turns out, Alexander de la Grip has not stopped the money because he feels insulted or snubbed by Isobel, he's just been dealing with his personal demons by trying to drown them in alcohol and casual sex, and he hasn't been monitoring his many business ventures very well for the past six months to a year. He's rather amused at Isobel's sudden change in behaviour towards him. He promises to make sure his money people start paying the organization again, and tempts Isobel to go on a date with him by promising an additional (ridiculously large) donation. 

Once Alexander decides to clean up his life and make something of himself to be worthy of Isobel, he does so very quickly indeed. Once Isobel actually gives him the time of day and starts talking to him, she discovers that her snap judgements of him have been unfair, and that there is a lot more to Alexander than his looks, wealth and seeming carelessness. Once she starts uncovering the real man, she can't help but be drawn to him. But Alexander isn't the only one with emotional baggage, and strong mutual physical attraction isn't going to be enough for them to build a lasting relationship. 

As I'm sure you can tell from my rather uninspired plot summary, there is a lot of 'come here, go away' (thanks, Mrs. J) in this book, and both protagonists have a lot of emotional baggage that makes it difficult for them to trust, commit, or believe themselves worthy of love. 

Alexander deals with his terrible parents' coldness by being an international playboy/manwhore and being seen publicly drunk in the press as often as possible, preferably with one or two socialite bimbos surrounding him. Nevertheless, he is also revealed to be extremely intelligent, able to read up and learn about pretty much any subject very quickly when he sets his mind to it. He's also apparently a gazillionaire, having invested early in tech and app development, not to mention his best friend's restaurant ventures, and now he can just keep raking in cash (and spending it . Due to his many trust issues, and his self-esteem issues, he doesn't want anyone to know about this side of him, not even his sister whom he loves and respects, and certainly not the clever doctor he's falling for. Just like no one suspects charming and slightly indifferent to anything serious billionaire Bruce Wayne of being dour vigilante Batman, absolutely no one would suspect international playboy Alexander de la Grip of being extremely clever and a secret philantropist. 

Isobel has severe mommy issues, having been raised by her grandmother while her narcissistic mother and withholding father were off doing their own things. Since both her grandfather and her mother were skilled doctors who devoted their lives to foreign aid work and rescue operations in far-flung places, Isobel was never going to be able to choose another career, but nevertheless defied her mother by joining MSF and working for a pittance most of the time, doing a lot less of the schmoozing with rich people to collect funds and a lot more of traveling to dangerous places to provide medical assistance to those who have nothing. She also secretly dreams of kinky things like BDSM, but feels like a freak for wanting what seems to be fairly low-level kink stuff. Being tied up and spanked isn't that far off the vanilla path, but from her reluctance to share her fantasies, you'd think she wanted something much more unusual. 

This book is long and meandering and also deals with Alexander's depressed older brother's atonement for the bad shit he did as a teenager and his possible redemption. He is falling in love with his family's former cleaning lady, who also happens to be much younger than him and a very hard-working immigrant, so there's an age gap and a massive class difference to consider. Åsa and Michel, who spent most of the last novel avoiding one another before suddenly realising their feelings for one another towards the end, are now getting married in a massive society wedding in Stockholm (Alexander brings Isobel as his date). We also get to see more of Natalia and David, and what seems to be their ridiculously happy home life. This book is over 500 pages long, and could have benefitted from an editor to trim some storylines. 

Spoiler! Skip this paragraph if you want to remain unspoiled

What this text certainly did not need was a last-minute (like last 40 pages or so) kidnapping drama with Isobel in danger and Alexander throwing tons of money at mercenaries to get her rescued (and getting himself shot in the process). Not sure that was the best way to resolve their final act breakup.

End spoiler

This is my second Arhnstedt novel, and I'm enjoying it. There's only one book left in this series, and it seems to focus on the security expert who helps Alexander towards the end of the book (and who's believed to be dead by everyone), so it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out.

Judging a book by its cover: While the green colour of the dress is lovely and the model has a wealth of red hair that makes it obvious that this is supposed to be Isobel, I hate the partially-cropped head view, and there's something about the torso on the woman that just looks awkward to me. Not sure why. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read 

CBR16 Books 17-18: "The Kingmaker" and "The Rebel King" by Kennedy Ryan

Total page count: 711 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR16 Sweet: Binge

Kennedy Ryan's All the Kings Men Duet, as she calls it, spans more than a decade and contains a lot of passion, danger, and drama. I'm reviewing both at the same time since they don't really stand alone. The Kingmaker ends on one heck of a cliffhanger, and The Rebel King would not be a satisfying place to start the series. 

Maxim Cade is still just in college when he travels with his father to the location of one of their planned oil pipelines, which just so happens to be on the land of an indigenous tribe. They are naturally less than thrilled about the destruction of some of their sacred lands, and there's a massive protest that Maxim's father wants to stop. One of the leaders of the protest is a young, beautiful native woman whose rousing speech and fierce defiance take Maxim's breath away, to the point where he runs to save her when the police arrive with tear gas and very aggressive dogs. He even gets bitten trying to protect her and spends some time in jail with the other protesters after being arrested with them. The passionate young woman is Lennix Moon Hunter, whose mother mysteriously disappeared some years earlier, after organising a different protest. Lennix is half Apache but lives with her white father, a college professor. He might be smitten, but once he discovers that Lennix is only seventeen, he wisely tamps down any amorous thoughts, even after being bailed out of jail, he can't forget her and her cause.

Maxim was never enthusiastic about taking over his father's giant oil company in the first place, and after the protest, he refuses to listen to his father and cuts ties with him entirely. He puts himself through college on money he inherited from a relative and barely speaks with his family, even years later, when he and Lennix meet again by chance in Amsterdam. Lennix is there for a week with her best friends from college, and Maxim is about to embark on an expedition to Antarctica for his post-grad work. He knows that Lennix will never speak to him again if she discovers his father's identity, so Maxim uses his middle name to introduce himself to her (he never told her his name while they were bonding after the arrest). Lennix is no longer a teenager, and the two of them spend a few days together, giving in to all the sizzling chemistry between them before Maxim needs to leave for his months-long stay on the South Pole.

By the time they meet for a third time, Lennix is working on the campaign of a liberal politician and has discovered who Maxim really is. He and his expedition mates ended up in a horrific storm in the Antarctic, nearly dying, and had to be rescued by Maxim's father. The news of the dangerous rescue is widely broadcast worldwide, and Lennix discovers that the handsome and charming young man she thought of as Maxim Kingsman is, in fact, the son of a man she hates. Despite all of Maxim's attempts to persuade her that he is nothing like his father and wants nothing to do with his family legacy, Lennix tells him to f*ck off and never darken her door again.

A decade later, Lennix Hunter is known as the Kingmaker. She and her best friend Kimba are among the best political consultants in the United States and have ensured victories for a large number of progressive political candidates. When Owen Cade, Maxim's older brother, runs for president, there is no one else he wants organising his campaign, but if they take the job, Lennix won't be able to avoid Maxim any longer. Having completely broken ties with his father, Maxim has achieved a lot of the goals he set himself in his early 20s. He's a self-made man, having pioneered a lot of technology to limit pollution and save the environment, and he's rich enough that he never needs to rely on his father's money ever again. There is only one more thing Maxim has left to achieve, winning Lennix back and getting her to forgive him. 

These two books are intense, people. There is so much stuff happening here. The epic love story of Maxim and Lennix is told in three distinct acts, where the third one, while they're fully adult and very successful in their own fields, is obviously the longest. Did the sometimes sprawling story need to be more than seven hundred pages long, split into two books? I'm not really sure it did, although I respect Ms. Ryan's sense of the dramatic. By ending The Kingmaker where she did, she guaranteed herself another sale. I thought I owned both books in this series when I started reading. It turns out that the other book I had was Queen Move, which is about Kimba, and takes place after these two. As a result, I went online to purchase The Rebel King immediately after finishing book one (of course it turned up in an e-book sale only a couple of weeks later - isn't that always the case?)

There's so much plot here, though. Lennix' mother disappearing, the oil pipeline protest, their chance to take their relationship to a new level when they meet again in Amsterdam, Maxim's expedition in the Arctic and the dramatic conclusion to it. The fraught meeting between the two of them once Maxim's lies of omission have been exposed by the media coverage of the rescue mission is short, but significant. By the time we meet them again for the third act, the stakes are high and it feels right that Maxim has to work hard to convince Lennix that he's worthy of her. 

The path to their Happily Ever After isn't without further obstacles, involving Lennix in a very dramatic and dangerous situation and the lengths Maxim is willing to go to get her out of it. Even once they have decided to make their relationship work, their path isn't smooth. There are personal losses and grief, and both of them have to reconsider their priorities and dreams for the future. I can't go into more specifics, because I don't want to spoil all the twists and turns this story takes.

I'm adding these books to my CBR16 Sweet "Binge" category, because I originally planned to read these AND Kimba's book, which is a sort of unofficial third book in the series. I binged these two books in a very short space of time, but once I was done, and even began Queen Move, it turns out I was all Kennedy Ryan'd out for the time being. So that book will have to wait until sometime later this year.

Judging the books by their covers: I chose two covers that match each other for my image, despite the fact that only my copy of The Kingmaker has that cover. Since I got the first book in the series (free e-book, if I recall correctly), the covers have been redesigned, and instead of black and white images of people who are probably meant to be Lennix and Maxim, the books now have a completely different font, which looks hand-written and images of flowers on a black background. They seem very wistful and romantic, and don't really fit the dramatic, fairly high-spice and frequently rather angsty tone of the duology. At least they're not cartoony cutesy covers in pastel. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read