Rating: 4.5 stars
CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity
Thank you to Netgalley and Avon for this ARC. My opinions are my own.
Ava is nursing her hurt feelings over the dissolution of her marriage in a hotel bar, when a handsome man approaches and offers to make her a better drink than the one she currently has (she made a face when sipping it). The man clearly has bartending experience, and after a brief conversation, Ava discovers that the charming man in fact owns the hotel she's currently in (not to mention a whole chain of them). Ava decides to do something entirely out of character for her, and agrees to a one night stand with Roman, which turns out to be a lot more memorable than either of them expected.
Roman Vasquez barely ever takes time off; he lives and breathes for his business empire, always striving for more and better. Yet the chance meeting with the downcast, but lovely Ava at the bar makes him uncharacteristically order his assistant to clear his entire schedule, and while they agreed it was to be a one-time thing, the two continue to meet up every few months or so, when Ava is feeling especially upset and dejected. At first, Roman doesn't mind being this beautiful woman's comfort hookup, but with every new meeting, he begins to fall more and more, and wants to pursue a proper relationship with Ava. He's always been hard-working and goal-oriented, and now his goal is to win Ava.
Ava has a very meddling family with a lot of strong opinions, and was basically made to feel like it was her fault that her husband cheated and that their marriage dissolved. She therefore wants none of her friends and family to find out about Roman, to avoid endless speculation and mean-spirited gossip about a relationship she doesn't see leading to a long-term future anyway. So it complicates matters rather a lot when she discovers that Roman is the best man at her cousin Jasmine's upcoming wedding (where Ava is the Maid of Honour). How is she going to keep their hook-ups secret when she can barely keep her eyes and hands off him every time he is near, and now they have to spend a lot of time together wedding planning?
This is only the second Alexis Daria novel that I've read, the first one being Take the Lead, a reworking of her debut novel. That was a perfectly good read (although I remember very little about the plot a year later), but it took me much longer to get through than many romances, since the plot and characterisation weren't really grabbing me. That is certainly not the case in this book. Eva is a really interesting protagonist, Roman is an excellent foil for her, and from their first meeting, I just wanted to keep reading to see what would happen next.
Some of the supporting characters in this story are the couples from the previous two books in the Primas of Power trilogy (both of which I own, but haven't gotten round to reading yet). While Ava's cousins Jasmine and Michelle are ride or die for her and would support her through anything, it's quite obvious that most of Ava's family are really toxic and constantly make her feel like a failure. In contrast, Roman's mother and sister (who both live with him in his swanky apartment, at his insistence) are extremely supportive of him - they just want him to find a better work-life balance (in fact, get any sort of life outside of work) and do so much for them.
I read this book after having finished some books that were either frustrating and rather boring or merely fine. So it's possible that my very high rating of this is because it was just so delightful to find an entertaining and well-written book as a palate cleanser to those other ones. I'm pretty sure that if I re-read it, I'll stand by my rating, though. It's not a full five stars (Ava takes a bit too long to wake up and realise that Roman is perfect for her), but this book balances some heavy themes and a lot of emotional topics in a good way. It's rare to find an author who can skillfully balance genuine emotion and romance, with cringeworthy embarrassment, cathartic long-overdue emotional confrontations with overbearing family, and still manage to include more than one laugh-out-loud moment. Yet in the final chapters of this book, Daria manages to do just that.
That excellent balance also makes it possible for me to ignore the "baby in the epilogue" of it all (much easier to do now that I'm no longer involuntarily childless). This book seems to have more endings than the movie version of Return of the King, but I guess that might be natural, since this book finishes up Daria's entire Primas of Power trilogy, and it doesn't just show us Ava and Roman's continued happiness, but what happens to the other two couples, as well. Now that I've read and thoroughly enjoyed this, I'm absolutely going to add the previous two books in the series to my reading list over the summer.
Judging a book by its cover: I really like the style of the covers for this trilogy, making the covers look like old-time movie posters. They're all distinct and suitable for the book in question, but eye-catching with bold colours, and the couple front and centre in a passionate embrace. I'm so very ready for the drawn covers to move on to something else, but these are better than a lot of other romances out there right now.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
