Savvy office temp Chloe Russell is trying to scrape together the money she needs to support her grandmother. So when a flu epidemic strikes Trainor Electronics and she’s promoted to Nathan Trainor’s assistant, she jumps at the lucrative opportunity. But then Nathan himself falls ill, and he and Chloe must work from his penthouse while he recuperates. Before long, it’s clear there’s genuine heat between them, and it’s more than just a fever spike. Will Nathan win Chloe’s heart—and the bet? Or will their differences destroy any chance for love?
Comment: This is the first book in the Wager of the Heart series by Nancy Herkness. I saw some positive comments on it somewhere and since in the blurb it was described the heroine was a hard working woman who had to pay bills and help her grandmother, I imagined catnip, since I really like struggling heroines but, of course, who can reach an HEA.
This book starts with the hero and two other rich guys making betting on a wager to find a woman who falls in love with them and not with the fact they have money. Knowing this would be quite difficult, billionaire hero Nathan tries to get out of the morning after but a new temporary receptionist and his own illness so soon after make them spend a lot of time together and the more he knows Chloe, the more genuine she appears.
For Chloe, this is another job but she can see her new boss is very good looking. However, things start to become weird after he gets ill but with some money issues to deal with, she also doesn't say no to better benefits.
Will these two hare more than a professional relationship?
When I saw the blurb for this book I was both surprised and eager because I had read a trilogy by the author before (Whisper Horse) and despite also being in contemporary genre, it didn't include a lot of sensuality (in my POV) but I hoped here the author would also include that. I mean, I liked the books in the other trilogy but they had been quite polished, in the sense that the character's behaviors felt contrived at times and there seemed to lack some obvious sexual attraction between them, even when it was described they kissed and so on.
I imagined this series might be sexier yes, but I wouldn't have minded the focus to be on the class differences between a rich hero and poorer heroine, since this is one of the tropes in romance I don't mind reading about.
When the story begun, I was hooked. I liked the idea of rich guys trying to find a woman that would love them for themselves and although the possible situations they would face being probably clichés didn't stop me from wanting to read it anyway. In fact, some scenes between Nathan and Chloe were like that, with him showing his money, his power, his possibilities in very obvious and sometimes absurd way.
Obviously, the goal here was for the reader to understand how the fact Nathan was very rich was not important for Chloe but several scenes just felt exaggerated, especially since the force behind it (show Chloe's lack of interest in his money) was repeated often.
In order for their relationship to seem being set in more than physical attraction, the author chose to have Nathan lacking emotional stability and his father was described as harsh because of his military profession and not willing to be close to Nathan like that. Of course Nathan has trust issues and so on... but I'd have preferred Nathan to be as confident and wealthy emotionally as he was financially. It just felt too easy to make them a complement like that, since Chloe is clearly down to earth and very attached to her grandmother.
Then we have the sexual attraction and intimacy. Whereas the Horse Whisper trilogy lacked some passion and defined romantic scenes (in my opinion, of course), in this story the couple jumped too quickly to sex. Of all the talk of finding someone for who he is and all that, he can't wait to sleep with her, even knowing she is his employee.
I'm as fan of boss/secretary romances as other romance readers but honestly, after the promising pages with Chloe not being "affected" by her new surroundings, the fact they so obviously gave in to their attraction made things lack romance for me.
I don't think I liked them that much after that and the fact the focus was more and more on how they were together and in the details each took to a relationship instead of the share of special moments while their lives kept on being, this stopped being about a rich guy and a poorer girl and become more about how Chloe would accept being with a rich guy anyway.
There were interesting details in the story, the pace was only obviously negative to me when it concerned the physical relationship between the couple.
The secondary characters were quite forgettable for me, they only played a role but throughout the story I just felt some detachment of what was happening. I think that, in terms of writing appeal, this story is pretty much in sync with what I had read by the author: precise, well executed prose but not engaging to the point of making things look special or addictive.
In this sense, I got a bit disappointed over the book, it wasn't as captivating as I hoped for, especially since I was not a fan of how Nathan and Chloe worked as a couple.
I don't think I'll read the rest of the series.
Grade: 6/10
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