Title: Dangerous Engagement
Author: Charlotte Byrd
Publisher/Year: Byrd Books 3/17/20
Length: 310 pages
Series: Wedlocked Trilogy #1
Overview
Not long ago, there was nothing I couldn’t have. Now, I don’t even have the choice of whom to marry.
To save my father’s life and our family’s legacy, I have to marry a cruel man who wants me only as a trophy.
Henry Asher was just supposed to be a summer fling, but we fell in love. We thought we would be together forever, but life got in the way. After we broke up, I vowed to never tell Henry the truth about my engagement.
What happens when the lies that were supposed to save me start to drown me?
Henry Asher
I didn’t always have wealth or power. There was even a time when I didn’t want any of that.
Then I met her: Aurora Tate is an heiress to a billion-dollar fortune. She grew up on Park Avenue, had a house in the Hamptons and skied in Aspen. Our first summer together was magical. We were naive enough to think that love was going to be enough.
Now, she’s forced to marry a man she hates to save her father’s life.
To get her back and to make her my wife, I need to become the man she needs me to be.
Can I do it in time?
My Thoughts
The summary doesn’t really do this story justice since it makes you think that we’re going to go in one direction and we go in another. Yes, Aurora and Henry are our leading characters, but they have a very complicated way that they came together and how their relationship progressed.
Aurora is the heiress to the Tate Media empire – a company that was started by her parents, and hopefully would go to her, yet she’s got a different hankering in life, although she doesn’t know what that is. She’s been raised in a life of privilege but that’s not who she is – she struggles to relate to what her friends in that world enjoy and that’s something that Henry alleviates for her.
Enter Henry – a guy who’s working on her father’s boat, but someone that changes her world in an unexpected way. After one meeting at the pool, that continues on to a date and overnight stay, well, Aurorat’s entire path of life has changed. While she’ still following the path of her PhD she’s got a romance that consumes her.
Sadly, that’s not a romance that her family will agree to given the world that they live in. Henry meets her parents, and makes a decent impression, but it’s not an impression that gives them fait that he’s the man for her. He doesn’t have a long term goal, and he’s not able to provide for the kind of life that Aurora is accustomed to, but she’s not willing to listen to reason.
So this first installment takes us on the journey of watching them try to become what they think they could be, yet find all of the obstacles in life taking bits of their enjoyment and romance away. Aurora’s mother gives her an ultimatum which she’s not willing to agree to and stays with Henry. They move to Henry’s apartment which isn’t ideal, and then Henry loses his job. Which means they lose their apartment since it’s subsidized by his job. So their life is in turmoil.
Enter Auroria’s parents, and we see that things are always able to get more complex. There are workings under the radar here – and while they seem to offer a solution to their worries, what happens in the unexpected. They offer Henry a way to get a job now that he’s unemployed, and at the same time, they give Aurora back her apartment. what happens though is the following.
- he gets the job, but they grow apart
- she gets her PhD but wonders why no one cares
- She’s set up with a man that is now employed by Tate Media, and while he’s a predator on her, she’s forced to endure
so we’re left at the end of this story with a romance turned sour, a family in ruins, and the unknown of an arrangement without consent. So of course I have to read on to see where this one goes and how it plays out. On that note, i’m off to the 2nd book since I cannot go to bed without seeing what happens next. Enjoy!