I read this stinker of a Harlequin Presents last fall through Hoopla and now got the paperback version in a book lot on eBay. Ugh. Much as I enjoy Kay Thorpe’s writing The Billion-Dollar Bride is boring, pretentious, stupid, with an on-again/off-again “heroine” who dumps her loving adoptive family to embrace the mega-rich lifestyle that her grandfather-by-blood has left her.
See, her nasty old grandfather forced his unwed daughter, heroine’s birth mother, to give her up for adoption but now has second thoughts and wants forgiveness. In the meantime birth mom and birth grandma died and good old grandpa remarried and adopted his stepchildren, making his adopted son the heir to his fortune and boss of his companies. (He gave stepdaughter – whom he also adopted – money but no affection.) He decides to leave his “real daughter” (our heroine) an enormous fortune provided she marries her step/adopted/no-real-relation brother, the aforementioned company boss and stays married for a year.
At first our heroine is all set to renounce any inheritance and fly back home to England, but when she discovers the number of zeros before the decimal point she dumps that for a bad idea, stays in California, marries the hero and embraces the life of the idle rich.
So we have the step/adopted daughter, the step/adopted son, the blood/but dumped daughter and 2nd wife all in a happy circle. The most interesting character is the step/adopted daughter who is furious at getting a tiny pittance (OK, to you or to me it would be a lot of money!) compared to the heroine. Does the heroine give any of her new riches to this lady who is now her sister in law? No. Does our heroine act responsible for the company positions she inherited in any way? No.
Do we like the heroine? No.
Is the writing style up to Kay Thorpe’s usual standard? No.
Is the hero a delightful hunk we can drool over? No.
Is there tension or any romantic suspense. No.
The setting and minor characters get a lick and a promise, definitely not up to Kay Thorpe standards. The Billion-Dollar Bride is part of Harlequin’s Welocked! series, which includes some excellent reads so I was doubly disappointed.
1 Star
Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Harlequin all have E and paper versions of this stinker and you can look for used copies on Thriftbooks and eBay. Personally I advise you to skip it!
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