ARC Book Review: The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren

Rating: ★★★★
Audience: Contemporary Romance
Length: 352 pages
Author: Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Release Date: May 14th, 2024
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Christina Lauren, returns with a delicious new romance between the buttoned-up heir of a grocery chain and his free-spirited artist ex as they fake their relationship in order to receive a massive inheritance.

Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.

Thank you to Simon Audio for the free audiobook.

CHAOTIC GOOD.

I binged this in a morning while chaotically packing for a trip and I think the balance of the chaoticness of this book really hit a mood I didn’t know I was in. This book is filled with drama, a FMC who absolutely does not have it together and a handsome man who needs her help. I didn’t even know this was a MOC book until I started it and I loved the set-up.

There were a few writing quirks that stood out, like how she kept referring to his 🍆 as “g*ddamn” that I just couldn’t understand the necessity. And this and that that stood out enough for this not to be a full five star.

I actually didn’t mind the drama because this book leans into it hard and I felt like that was the point. I wanted the drama, the escapism of this beachy kind of read and the enjoyment of a good romance. I liked how Anna and Liam figured things out and even though there was a benefits moment, you could tell they had insane chemistry together and the caring groundwork was already in place.

This is another tally in the win column for a CL book.

Overall audience notes: