September 16, 2019
What starts as a million-dollar contract leads to real feelings in Lopez’s steamy contemporary debut. Billionaire Roxanne Medina doesn’t want a relationship, but she does want a baby. Mateo de Esperanza, the crown prince of Monte del Vino Real, is struggling to keep his kingdom afloat. When Roxanne learns of Mateo’s financial crisis, she offers him a deal. She’ll bankroll his country if he’ll marry her and help her to conceive a royal child. Her terms are clear: they’ll spend three days a month together and have sex only for conception. After the press finds out about the marriage, the pair are forced to spend more time together to keep up appearances. As sparks fly between them, the CEO of a resort threatens to leak Roxanne’s contract with Mateo and reveal the true nature of their relationship if she won’t sell him half the country. The only hope to save the kingdom and their marriage is for Mateo and Roxanne to work together. Though the plot meanders in the second half, the romance burns slow and hot throughout. Fans of fake-relationship romances will delight in this fresh spin on the trope. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary.
Starred review from October 15, 2019
Billionaire CEO Roxanne Medina has one axiom in life: everything has a price tag. So when she goes shopping for a husband to father the baby she desperately wants, Roxanne zeroes in on Mateo Ferdinand Juan Carlos de Esperanza y Santos, aka the Golden Prince, of Monte del Vino Real. Mateo must have money for his struggling wine business, and Roxanne is happy to underwrite all of Mateo's costs in exchange for his hand in marriage and three nights a month of his husbandly services. Roxanne thought she had reduced everything down to a simple business transaction, but that was before she found herself falling in love with her new husband. Lopez successfully flips the gender switch on the wealthy CEO trope while at the same time incorporating a generous dash of fairy-tale glitz and glam into the captivating storyline of her marvelous debut. And when these elements are combined with engaging characters and an abundance of boldly sensual, vividly rendered love scenes, you have everything fans of sexy contemporary romances could ever crave.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)