Princess/Cinderella. Pauper/Prince. Sins Of The Father.

 

TRIGGER WARNING: MISCARRIAGE. I know that I seem to be on a romance kick with this blog, but hey, I'm sure you all know how it feels when you're drawn to a certain genre.  And again, I bring you all another Cinderella-based tale with Cinderella Hired For His Revenge by Emmy Grayson (don't you just LOVE that name?  I DO).  

Characters: Alexandra Moss (Nee Waldsworth), Grant Santos

Premise: Lovers torn apart rekindle their romance.

Alexandra's dream is to stand on her own two feet and make something of herself after her father, David Waldsworth was tried and convicted of stealing money from his investors, which there had been a lot of (I happened to loathe David Waldsworth and I'm glad he wasn't actually seen in the book, just mentioned).  As I'm sure you can imagine, this was a big shock to Alexandra as she and her stepbrother, Finn were left penniless, their own reputations in tatters.  Her business, the Flower Bell, isn't doing so great and she needs a miracle to get it from the red to the black.   Enter Grant Santos, her ex-boyfriend from her teenage years.

What can I say about Grant?  He's obviously surprised to see Alexandra and more than ready to exact some revenge and show her everything that she's been missing out on since she cruelly dumped him when they were nineteen-years old. I really felt for Grant.  He and his mother had to flee Brazile after his father was killed by the head of a cartel because the man refused to use his business to move drugs and Grant took any job he could after he finished his schooling, which is where he met Alexandra (after being hired by her father as a gardener) and the two fell in love.

Generally, I'm not really a fan of the whole "I'm gonna hold a grudge against you for breaking my heart all those years ago" trope, but this time, however, given the fact that Alexandra humiliated Grant in front of her father, I could see why he held onto his anger and hurt.  But of course, as is the Harlequin fashion, those old feelings rear their heads even though both Grant and Alexandra try to fight against these feelings, and of course, Alexandra's two big secrets come out: The first one being that after discovering their relationship, Alexandra's father, David told her to break up with Grant (even going as far as to give her a freakin' script to recite) or he would have Grant and his mother deported back to Brazile even though they were in danger of being killed if they returned (Did I mention that I LOATHE this man?). And the second? Alexandra had been pregnant with Grant's child.  However, she ends up miscarrying the child (probably due to the stress of everything that was happening at the time) which is only known by her stepbrother Finn who ended up taking her to the hospital, resulting in the two of them becoming better friends.  

One of the things that I liked was the parallels you see in Alexandra and Grant's stories: she was the rich kid, he was the gardener, she had everything, he had to fight and claw for everything he had.  But as you see in the story, underneath the surface, Alexandra didn't have it as good as everyone thinks.  Her father is abusive, controlling, and then later on a crook.  Then, due how high profile her father's arrest was (and the nature of the crime), she was looked at as being just like him, even losing out on a loan because the person she goes to had been a victim of her father's machinations.  Whereas Grant ends up as part of the world that Alexandra had been cast out of and he's understandably mad as heck as well as hurt.

Overall, the story was great, if maybe a little predictable as far as romance stories go.  That being said, I do feel like the miscarriage was in a way glossed over.  They mention it happening but they don't go into how Alexandra feels about it.  Like, did she wonder what her child would've been like, how long did it originally take for her to come to grips with it?, and did having to tell Grant about it bring up those old feelings?  While I have never experienced this, I know that many other women have and Grayson had a chance to really portray this, but played it kinda....safe, I guess? (For lack of a better term).  I get it, it's a hard topic to write about, but I feel like she should've explored it more.  

Another mark against the book (though to be fair, a lot of Harlequins seem to do this as well) is that the epilogue summed up a lot of stuff in the narration part of the story when Grayson could've conveyed the same information through dialogue as she had done in the bulk of the story.  Except for these few things, I found the story rather enjoyable.  I'd give it a respectable 5.