Off-Limits Fling with the Heiress – Rachael Stewart

How to Win a Monroe
1

In the latest Harlequin Romance from Rachael Stewart, for this billionaire, spending the summer with his best friend’s little sister is complicated…by his forbidden feelings for the heiress! Forbidden attraction… or forever fling? I’ve always been drawn to heiress Avery Monroe, but I’ve also known how completely off-limits she is! We haven’t spoken since I rejected her kiss three years ago. Now, her brother’s meddling means Avery’s spending the summer with me at my castle in Croatia. I promised to protect her, but uncovering Avery’s secret battles, I can’t keep my true feelings hidden. Will our passion finally be unlocked?

This book contains:

References to drug and alcohol addiction
Death of loved parents
Depression.

Gabe is our strong, quiet hero who focuses on working hard and growing his father’s company. He’s always done the best he can to support his best friend Aiden, and Aiden’s younger sister, even if it’s put him in difficult positions.

Avery is our heroine who’s lived through the death and aftermath of her father. After her beloved father passed away, she lost her older brother Aiden to the family business and her mother to grief leaving her to try and cope with her out of control emotions. Which inevitably led her down a path her family doesn’t approve of.

Gabe and Avery have some irresistible chemistry that Gabe is committed to denying. While Avery is convinced, she couldn’t be with anyone but Gabe, he remains standoffish and at arm’s length for the sake of his relationship with Aiden.

But that changes when Aiden asks Gabe for a favour, to help Avery.

I was a bit confused at first because the first short portion of the book is set a few years before the time period of the blurb. Normally when I read books that have a start in the past, it’s a single prologue chapter, and then you’re into the current day (for the book).

Bu Rachael rarely does things the normal way, and instead of giving us just a barely there taste or a highly explained set up, she gives us the proper space for us to feel the pull of attraction between the two characters. As well as Gabe’s insistence on keeping things platonic and G rated between them, despite Avery’s attempts otherwise.

In the end, we get our typical style of romance that cuts RIGHT down to the wire (and yes, I was honestly worried we wouldn’t get a HEA in this book it cuts it THAT close!) but is also so magical. I know we’ll see these two again in the sequel coming out in a couple of months so I’m excited to see how they feature in that as well!