From Convenience To Love

TRIGGER WARNING: MISCARRIAGE AND INFERTILITY ISSUES. I understand that this is a sensitive subject for a lot of people, so if you don't feel you can join me for this review, that is absolutely okay. 

 I was wrecked. Absolutely wrecked.  Abby Green is another author I took a chance on and it was an emotional ride.  I didn't know about the infertility issues when I first started the book, but once I realized that this was part of the story, I became curious as to how it would be handled. 

Characters: Primo Holt, Faye MacKenzie

Premise: A couple agrees to a marriage of convenience with the caveat of being able to divorce each other and walk away clean after sixth months.

Both Faye and Primo (I know, I know.  What kind of name is Primo?  Ask the author, not me) have been burned by love before----Primo through witnessing his mother leaving and watching his father deal with the pain by serial dating/marriage and Faye through the loss of her marriage after a miscarriage and a partial hysterectomy---and both of them erected walls to protect themselves from being hurt again and carefully generated personas that would keep others at arm length.

 However, this was starting to turn on them both, people were talking (read, gossiping) about how Faye hadn't remarried after her divorce as well as the fact that her father had made some bad investments over the years and was in danger of losing his company and Primo was losing deals due to his single status (I'm assuming that some of his potential clients had been family people or family-oriented, so I could see how they'd be reluctant to do business with someone who was perpetually single) so he decided that he needed a wife and chose Faye even though they hadn't even met, though they ran in the same social circles, which might seem a little strange, but Faye was an art broker---someone who found specific pieces of art for people---and Primo was the driving force behind his father's company, so his proposal would kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes.

As one could expect, Faye was not amenable to the idea (not that I blame her as Primo's proposal was awful as it was basically "We should get married because of x, y, and z.  Sign here".  Which, my dude!  Even if it's a business arrangement, be a little less clinical with that kind of thing, m'kay?), but after some thought and an addition to Primo's paperwork of being able to reassess in six months, Faye agreed because of the afore mentioned risk of her father losing his company.

Even as sparks begin to fly and they fall in love with one another, even though they don't recognize that they are, Faye keeps quiet about her previous miscarriage and partial hysterectomy, and normally, I would be yelling at a character to just put on their big kid pants and come clean, but this one I understood.  Her ex had walked away from her shortly after her surgery even after it was revealed that they could still have children through surrogacy, claiming that he could never love a child that didn't have his DNA, and even though these experiences had been ten years prior to the events in the book, she was still holding to her heartache, hurt, and feelings of inadequacy, which, even though I've never had a miscarriage or hysterectomy, I understood as I am unable to have children myself due to a medical condition.    

Of course, as these things do, Faye's secret comes out at the worst possible time, when she and Primo are visiting his brother and his family and she proposes that they divorce because in her mind, it was too painful to see what she could never have and she felt that Primo deserved to be with someone who could give him heirs.  Thankfully, Primo goes after her and tells her that he loves her and that he would still love her even if they never had children, and she comes back to him, and of course, in true Harlequin fashion they end up having children through IVF and a surrogate.

As I stated, this story absolutely wrecked me.  My heart broke for both Faye and Primo, but it was beautiful to see them getting past their hurts and fears, letting their guards down as they also tore down the walls that they had built over their hearts.  The only thing I was disappointed in was that they only spent a chapter---the last one---on the impact of Faye's revelation and we as readers didn't get to see Primo working through the revelation.  After all, this is a big thing for anyone to learn and I feel that it would've been better served for the audience to see the him working through this.  As a whole, I did enjoy the book and I'd give it an 8.