Title: The Billionaire’s Deal
Author: Crystal Kaswell
Publisher/Year:  9/7/15
Length:   380  pages
Series:  The Billionaire’s Deal

Overview

She’s broke and out of options. He’s willing to dig her out of debt… if she submits to his terms.

Kat Wilder is totally screwed. At only twenty-one, she’s resigned to one seriously bleak future. Waiting tables barely supports her only family, her sister, and she’s got no luck finding a better job. With no money or time for school, she has no chance at a better life.

Then she meets Blake. The billionaire tech CEO is a lifeline. An arrogant, controlling, impossible to read lifeline. He wants something from Kat and he’ll do whatever it takes to get it.

He offers Kat a deal– a few months of her life for a few hundred thousand dollars. All she has to do is play his girlfriend and convince everyone that she’s madly in love with him.

It’s Blake’s way, Blake’s terms, Blake utterly in control.

She tells herself it’s only business. But the part between them that matters– the two of them alone, her giving in to everything he wants– that part is strictly personal.

My Thoughts

I came to this story in a round about way.  I got another book – sort of a spin off to this one via NetGalley and realized that part of how i’d really get to the crux of that story was to read this first one – so alas, i went on a search for this.  Thank goodness there’s a ‘complete’ story because while i’m a sucker for a good novella series, i think that i really wanted the full book.

In this story – we have Kat who’s our leading lady, a girl of 21, who’s had the unfortunate situation of having to care for and pay for all things related to herself and her now 18 years old sister as their parents died in a car accident 3 years prior.  That means that although Kat’s been making ends meet so that her sister Lizzy could finish high school and get into a great college, there’s still quite a strain on their resources so we meet Kat when she’s trying to get a job at a better paying restaurant.  To no success of  course, and as she’s leaving, she walks smack dab into our leading man – Blake.

Blake now – he’s a very successful CEO of a tech company, a billionaire in need of someone to fill a role in his life that we slowly start to learn about.  And this is where our story takes shape.

Throughout this story, we know that love’s not on the table – not an option for either character, but i think that we all know that what starts as completely platonic will never end that way – and well, it’s just a matter here of who gets there first and what it will mean.

In addition to that ideal, we also have the point that it’s all in secret what they are doing together.  Kat isn’t allowed to even tell her sister about what’s going on, and in Blake’s mind, this ruse that they have is something that will have to be kept a secret for quite some time.

The supporting characters of Lizzy, Fiona and the mother are all ones that i like and i have to say that Declan is even one that i’d love to learn more about – curious to see if he gets a spin off.  There’s a bit of added something that we get when we are seeing the interactions between them all, and what everyone’s own agenda is to get to a common happy place.

So on that note – i’m really happy that i got a hold of this first book in the ‘series’ as i’ll call it, and i think that i’m even more excited to see the next one that i’ve gotten from NetGalley.