Review: The Wicked Billionaire by Jackie Ashenden

I really debated how to rate this book. There were parts that I loved, but also parts that I struggled with, parts that just didn’t seem to make sense.

What I loved:

Our main characters Lucas and Grace have a very unique interaction. They start out as two people who barely know each other and aren’t terribly comfortable with one other and eventually bring out the best in each other. I appreciated that the changes in Lucas’s character were gradual. The stone cold ice man didn’t just flip a switch and become a loving boyfriend. Grace’s effect on him was subtle and he slowly transitioned from a character that I tolerated to one I genuinely liked. Lucas’s impact on Grace was a little more obvious and quick acting, but her character didn’t have the drastic emotional growth we saw with him.

The premise of the story, a wealthy Navy SEAL protects a friend’s widow and they fall in love was what drew me to the book. The execution of that story falls under the category of….

What I struggled with:

I don’t know if my issue with the plot execution has to do with the fact that this is book 2 in a series (and I haven’t read book 1) or just that it does more than stretch the imagination. The fact that Lucas, a highly trained SEAL would accept intelligence and then act on it without verification or back up seemed more than odd. There were several other things like that, issues that just didn’t jive that made plot elements hard to accept.

It didn’t help that a seemingly random tangential story line was inserted into the book and that Lucas’s unreasonable reaction was what forced his hand in the physical relationship with Grace.

Setting aside the plot issues, I enjoyed the story in Wicked Billionaire (even if the title itself doesn’t make sense either, except for the little reference at the end). Several tweaks along the way would have pushed this from an average read, 3 cocktail read, to something closer to 4.