Welcome back, this week I managed to read one of the books in my TBR pile. This book is about a young girl who is rich, but not in control of the money and has two rich guys competing for her attention. It sounds intriguing doesn’t it?
Well we started out with a 15 yr old girl heading to her dad’s yacht for spring break hoping for once that there isn’t a new wife. Unfortunately there is a new wife, and this some there’s a college aged kid involved as well. Given that she’s still in high school I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate for two rich guys to be fighting over her…
Luckily it turns out that this was setting the scene for the rest of the book. Through a series of letters between Harper (the young girl) and Christopher (the college aged kid) we fast forward 3 years to when Harper is going to college. It feels like they might get together at this point in time. But Christopher always being the “good man” doesn’t take advantage of Harper and let’s things be. This felt a little silly to me given that he’d just travelled all the way to NYC to see Harper’s art exhibit and kissed her. But boys will be silly and mess things up for themselves.
Since her dad died that night I can kinda understand why he backed off. But his treatment of her at the reading of the Will seemed a little over the top. Getting Harper to dislike him wasn’t hard, but I don’t think he needed to quite dig the knife in her back in quite the way he did. Harper understandably stays with her mum and does everything she can to ensure they are supported so that she doesn’t have to marry a rich guy just to get by. Which is going to be pretty hard to do since the Will stipulated that she can access her trust for things like education and living costs. So long as it’s used for her, and her alone. With Christopher to oversee it and ensure no money is spent to care for anyone other than Harper.
By this part of the book we’ve barely started. Does that give you an indication of how much more there is in this book? I really do love a book that gives you enough back story to get what’s happening, without focusing on it too much so that we can still enjoy the rest of the story. In this case the story is 4 years later, Harper is now 22, and Christopher hasn’t paid a credit card bill like he was meant to. And Harper is pissed. Cue the introduction of guy number two. Sutton. Turns out he’s Christopher’s business partner and loves to see shit hit the fan and is helping Harper so he can see Christopher lose his shit.
Which doesn’t happen. At least not immediately. Sutton pursues Harper, and they do get pretty hot and heavy without doing the deed. It seems every time they get close, Christopher interupts them and makes a big song and dance about how Harper should stay away from Sutton because he’s a bad guy. Since Christopher is a pretty controlling guy who always expects things to be done his way I can understand why Harper doesn’t want to go to him. Even though she is still in love with him. Just coz she’s in love with him doesn’t mean she has to put up with that controlling behaviour. So good on Harper for getting out of there!
On the other hand Sutton takes her out, holds her hand, let’s her make decisions and plays around. He seems like the obvious choice for Harper. But love is a strange thing. Especially when Sutton is willing to hurt himself to try and make Harper happy. I mean, in reality how often does that happen? For the sake of leaving some mystery to the book if you chose to read it I won’t tell you what he does that leaves me completely confused and unsure where the book was going. But if you read it I’m sure you’ll know where I started to get lost and unsure. It was bad enough I actually wasn’t sure if I’d finish the book because it just seemed so weird and out of place and just wrong.
But I decided to finish it since I was about 80-85% of the way through the book already. And I can say, it doesn’t end up being what I thought it’d be, but it’s still weird. Harper ends up going back to her mum and she tries to move on. Except she has to go back one more time and do one last painting. And I love the work she does. She paints Cleopatra who was in a similar situation as an act of defiance and feminine power against the patriarchy. I love the passion behind her drive to paint her even though she knew she’d get destroyed anyway. It just felt so right and so powerful in the only way she really knew how to be.
And I loved that the book ended on the same note as this final painting. It just felt right. There is a second book that I think I will get and review in the coming months. This one is a duet so there is only the two books and I really want to know what happens next!
In the mean time I will be reading “Sweet Addiction” by J. Daniels next week. I hope you enjoyed this review and I look forward to seeing you all again next week!
