L.J. Shen

Boston’s most infamous femme fatale meets her match in a dangerously mild Englishman who has vowed to never marry in this romantic standalone from Washington Post bestselling author L.J. Shen

Emmabelle Penrose has cruised through life never needing a man, a plan that has worked stunningly well until about five minutes ago, when she decided she must have a baby.

Devon Whitehall is 6’2” of premium DNA, financial security, and British royal titles. Best of all, he fears the one thing she dreads the most: getting hitched.

Emmabelle figures it’s a no-brainer when Devon offers his services—sperm and involvement in her future child’s life.

What begins as an innocent, modern-family arrangement, quickly erodes into a web of lies, dark pasts, and unfurled secrets.

Inside this chaos, Emmabelle and Devon are forced to face the awful truth—they are capable of love.

Even worse, they might feel it toward each other.

A Dark Royal Romance

The Rake

the relationship is VERY MUCH irritating, sometimes i can't stand emmabelle. she's sooo denial about everything, the only thing that i like about her is her wit. her hilarious remarks. devon? you're a grown ass man, that should says a lot. though i love his name, devon, it sounds sexy.

Jules

** spoiler alert **
           3.8
yes, I read this very quickly my excitement kept me reading all day so I definitely have to reread in the future. for now to say that emmabelle is my new goddess and religion, I identified with her and with her situation, i wish she told someone what happened to her... I don't want to go into personal things but her pov almost made me cry.
Devon also surprised me, I didn't expect him to be the one to admit his feelings first, although I didn't like the whole plot with Louisa, it was too messy and he was too soft with her.
(And fck Devon's parents wtf it's wrong with them)
As a couple devonbelle was not bad, I expected more moments of them together more conversations, there was a point where they say they love each other and I needed more content of them falling in love.
What I loved was their banter and how they easily make each other laugh and chemistry.
It was a good, it just left me expecting and wanting more of them, maybe when I reread more camly next time I can absorb more of them.

Molly Morgan

** spoiler alert **
           I really enjoyed the trauma communication in this book. They built the proper trust to get there and I loved that. The FMC was feisty and a hilarious POV to read!

The pregnancy trope isn't really my schtick, and the spice was there but not very descriptive at all? The MMC was obnoxious. He goes off and sleeps with someone else while they are in their agreement and I HATED that.

Emily Cutler

I have pretty mixed views about this book. Some parts of it, such as the humour, I found brilliant but then other areas just didn’t work. 

Firstly, this is a marriage-of-convenience book so the heroine, Emmabelle (Belle), spends the majority of the story pregnant. This was a nice change because we don’t tend to have a lot of these kind of stories. It was also really funny to see Belle experiencing all the different emotions that go along with pregnancy. 

Belle was a badass. She was sassy, fierce but also vulnerable. She had the best one liners and didn’t take shit from no one. 

The romance in this book didn’t work for me. I don’t really get Belle and Devon as a couple. We didn’t get to see their first hookup as it happened off page years previously. It was a shame because we didn’t get to see their initial chemistry and how it progressed. I would’ve loved to have seen a flashback of that moment because I always think that their first times are one of the most important moments in a romance novel. 

The spice was very mild, which was disappointing because her other books have great smut. The scenes might as well have faded into black because they were very rushed and didn’t really offer anything. 

I love reading books where a character is from England. I find it so funny seeing the words and phrases the author writes for that character. I promise we never actually speak like that! 

Note: Make sure you check trigger warnings.

The Rake A Dark Royal Romance

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