First Comes Marriage (Ele’s review)

Title: First Comes Marriage
Author: Shira Anthony
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: January 15, 2016
Genre(s): Contemporary
Page Count: 262
Reviewed by: Ele
Heat Level: 3.5 flames out of 5
Rating: 3.6 stars out of 5
Blurb:

Their marriage was supposed to be all business…

When struggling novelist Chris Valentine meets Jesse Donovan, he’s interested in a book contract, or possibly a date. The last thing Chris expects is a marriage proposal from New York City’s most eligible bachelor!

Jesse’s in a pinch: to keep control of his company, he has to marry. So he has valid reasons for offering Chris this business deal. In exchange for living in a gorgeous mansion for a year, playing the doting husband, Chris gets all the writing time he wants and walks away with a million dollar payoff. Surely Chris can handle that. He can handle living with the most handsome and endearing man he’s ever met, a man he immediately knows he wants in the worst way and can’t have. Or can he?

This was lovely! The arranged marriage trope is something I don’t come across often enough , but it’s one of my favourites. And here, it was done just right!

Jesse has to get married in order to keep running the family bussiness. So, he proposes to Chris, a struggling writer that he met during an author reading night.

At first, Chris refuses, but Jesse’s business proposal is very tempting and he ends up accepting. And Jesse actually courts him, with flowers, dinner and all! I liked that a lot!

Jesse was an enigma at first, but later on I understood where he came from and I appreciated his POV, although I could have done without the disappearing acts.

There is a lot of slow burn. Stolen kisses and steamy dreams, but nothing actually happens between them for a big part of the book. But when it does happen, it’s very emotional and scorching hot.

Admittedly, somewhere along the way I felt that both MCs actions dragged the story out and I was close to losing interest.

Also I didn’t get

Spoiler: why Chris got so angry when he found out that Jesse wasn’t straight as he initially thought, to the point he wanted to cancel the arrangement. This was a conversation that should have taken place before they actually got married, but it never did.

I also liked Wenda, the “evil” stepgrandmother