What do you think?
Rate this book
Keeping a Greek Secret
Keeping a Greek Secret is a secret baby, marriage of convenience, revenge romance by Maya Blake.
“I want my son.
And I will have him.”
Billionaire Nelios Petralis has planned devastating retribution on the parents who cast him into the gutter. He won’t be derailed by Vayle Lancaster, their surrogate daughter. She’s stowed away on his private jet to convince him to relent, but one agonizingly pleasurable night won’t change his mind…
A year later, her life destroyed by Nelios’s vengeance, Vayle’s only solace is their baby. She naively believed he would never crave anything more than revenge. Instead, when he finds out her secret, he wants his son—and Vayle shackled with a platinum band!
From Harlequin Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds.
“I want my son.
And I will have him.”
Billionaire Nelios Petralis has planned devastating retribution on the parents who cast him into the gutter. He won’t be derailed by Vayle Lancaster, their surrogate daughter. She’s stowed away on his private jet to convince him to relent, but one agonizingly pleasurable night won’t change his mind…
A year later, her life destroyed by Nelios’s vengeance, Vayle’s only solace is their baby. She naively believed he would never crave anything more than revenge. Instead, when he finds out her secret, he wants his son—and Vayle shackled with a platinum band!
From Harlequin Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds.
200 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 24, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 3, 2026
I love some of this author books and took a chance on buying this one, now with regret. I could not get into the character, the mystery of his parents abandoning him when he was a child? As well as no mention of heroine sexual history until their first sexual encounter.. heroine seemed very comfortable around sex but apparently it was her second sexual encounter? Was the other sexual encounter one off?? also the sex scene with the hero have minimum description? did not feel the chemistry and found the book boring and challenging to finish😭 took longer and still disappointed.
April 22, 2026
It is difficult to rate some books because often elements in a book are super but overall, a book may not match up to those elements. This book is such a case.
Although I grant this book a medium score, I must point out that the backstory of the hero is one of the most powerful I've come across. So moving and heart-breaking. Nelios has been left behind when his parents leave Greece to find work in the UK. He feels pain when he receives no phone call or letters. He is only 12 when left to The System, and when The System fails him, he bolts along with some other boys. They succeed at fleeing Greece and go to Sicily to work and save money. When he returns, Nelios immediately makes a legal name change and purchases his first hotel. Thus starts his rise to the famous hotelier he is today with his string of hotels named NeliosI, NeliosII, NeliosIII until today he is opening his latest in Buenos Aires -- NeliosXV.
He seeks to tie up the loose ends of his life (I assume to end his feelings of abandonment he can't shake) and take full control of his life story, free of the past. His investigators find his mother working at a UK hotel where she essentially acted as the mother presence for the young hotel heiress -- ALL THESE YEARS he was alone, hungry, abused, suffering, struggling. He targets this last struggling hotel of heiress Vayle for takeover and feels that will end his mother's meal ticket as well. Just desserts in his view. Only he isn't prepared for Vayle being both attractive and persistently unwilling to let her family's last hotel be taken from her.
We get a look at the street-hardened Nelios when he finishes his vengeful plan, complete with blacklisting both his mother, Agnes, and Vayle from the hospitality/hotel business -- a truly shocking, cruel detail!
Something slowed down the momentum of this story. I think it was the dialogue which was continually chopped up by descriptions and feelings etcetera, which prevented the dialogue from being the primary mover of the action. The dialogue was not allowed to have a real-life timeframe. Also lacking were consistent cinematic features to serve as clear breaks in the story to move us from one major development to the next.
I think the suspense about his mother's true motivations would have worked better if there had been some point of suspicion to hang it on that might have tempted Vayle's loyalty to Agnes. As it was, there was nothing presented to cause Vayle to pause or falter even a moment from her loyal nature.
My biggest take-away from the story was the depth of Nelios' suffering such an experience of abandonment. We are shown he is a resilient person through his hardwork and a caring person through his efforts to provide aid for street kids and job programs for adults who have suffered that rough childhood background. He is both good and cruel and therefore an intriguing puzzle of a man.
As for Vayle? She seems more goofy than desperate with her bizarre stow-away effort. At the same time, she is stoic in every situation, from her forbearance with her troubled father to dealing with the pregnancy and baby, and then Nelios' unfamiliar ways, and she is also surprisingly forgiving.
Agnes remains a mystery until the end. The combination of her reticence to tell Vayle her story and Nelios' disinterest to hear it are scattered through the story repeatedly, but I think it would have been better if they had formed unique dramatic scenes.
It is a great story, but the execution is not smooth.
NOTE: The love declaration by Nelios is one of the BEST. Truly made it worth the journey.
Although I grant this book a medium score, I must point out that the backstory of the hero is one of the most powerful I've come across. So moving and heart-breaking. Nelios has been left behind when his parents leave Greece to find work in the UK. He feels pain when he receives no phone call or letters. He is only 12 when left to The System, and when The System fails him, he bolts along with some other boys. They succeed at fleeing Greece and go to Sicily to work and save money. When he returns, Nelios immediately makes a legal name change and purchases his first hotel. Thus starts his rise to the famous hotelier he is today with his string of hotels named NeliosI, NeliosII, NeliosIII until today he is opening his latest in Buenos Aires -- NeliosXV.
He seeks to tie up the loose ends of his life (I assume to end his feelings of abandonment he can't shake) and take full control of his life story, free of the past. His investigators find his mother working at a UK hotel where she essentially acted as the mother presence for the young hotel heiress -- ALL THESE YEARS he was alone, hungry, abused, suffering, struggling. He targets this last struggling hotel of heiress Vayle for takeover and feels that will end his mother's meal ticket as well. Just desserts in his view. Only he isn't prepared for Vayle being both attractive and persistently unwilling to let her family's last hotel be taken from her.
We get a look at the street-hardened Nelios when he finishes his vengeful plan, complete with blacklisting both his mother, Agnes, and Vayle from the hospitality/hotel business -- a truly shocking, cruel detail!
Something slowed down the momentum of this story. I think it was the dialogue which was continually chopped up by descriptions and feelings etcetera, which prevented the dialogue from being the primary mover of the action. The dialogue was not allowed to have a real-life timeframe. Also lacking were consistent cinematic features to serve as clear breaks in the story to move us from one major development to the next.
I think the suspense about his mother's true motivations would have worked better if there had been some point of suspicion to hang it on that might have tempted Vayle's loyalty to Agnes. As it was, there was nothing presented to cause Vayle to pause or falter even a moment from her loyal nature.
My biggest take-away from the story was the depth of Nelios' suffering such an experience of abandonment. We are shown he is a resilient person through his hardwork and a caring person through his efforts to provide aid for street kids and job programs for adults who have suffered that rough childhood background. He is both good and cruel and therefore an intriguing puzzle of a man.
As for Vayle? She seems more goofy than desperate with her bizarre stow-away effort. At the same time, she is stoic in every situation, from her forbearance with her troubled father to dealing with the pregnancy and baby, and then Nelios' unfamiliar ways, and she is also surprisingly forgiving.
Agnes remains a mystery until the end. The combination of her reticence to tell Vayle her story and Nelios' disinterest to hear it are scattered through the story repeatedly, but I think it would have been better if they had formed unique dramatic scenes.
It is a great story, but the execution is not smooth.
NOTE: The love declaration by Nelios is one of the BEST. Truly made it worth the journey.
April 8, 2026
SHOCKED by how well written this was.
The chemistry crackles in every scene.
The big, intergenerational and intimate family trauma drama around which the plot pivots is the best kind of soap, full of juice and rippling, character driven ramifications.
The sex was some of the hottest I’ve ever read.
And most surprisingly, the sentences were as good as anything in “lit fic.”
This author writes with her whole vocabulary. An absolute master class in finding endlessly fresh, lush, and sumptuous new ways to say, these characters are horny AF for each other right now.
I loved every minute.
The chemistry crackles in every scene.
The big, intergenerational and intimate family trauma drama around which the plot pivots is the best kind of soap, full of juice and rippling, character driven ramifications.
The sex was some of the hottest I’ve ever read.
And most surprisingly, the sentences were as good as anything in “lit fic.”
This author writes with her whole vocabulary. An absolute master class in finding endlessly fresh, lush, and sumptuous new ways to say, these characters are horny AF for each other right now.
I loved every minute.
February 28, 2026
A good read
This is a very good story. The H is out for revenge, his mother abandoned him when he was young and took the h under wing and raised her. The h owned a hotel and he took it from her to get back at his parents. They had a one night stand which led to an unexpected pregnancy. He insists they marry for his son’s sake. The h wants him to speak to his mother and find out why she left him. There’s a plot twist. Overall a good book. They found their HEA. Great epilogue.
This is a very good story. The H is out for revenge, his mother abandoned him when he was young and took the h under wing and raised her. The h owned a hotel and he took it from her to get back at his parents. They had a one night stand which led to an unexpected pregnancy. He insists they marry for his son’s sake. The h wants him to speak to his mother and find out why she left him. There’s a plot twist. Overall a good book. They found their HEA. Great epilogue.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews