The contract runs six months. The bond runs forever.
Sloane Vega is a professional omega nester, the person who makes other people's spaces feel like home, then leaves before they become one. He's been doing it for nine years. He's very good at not getting attached.
Then a contract lands on his six months in a penthouse apartment, presenting publicly as the mate of Jaxon Mercer, NHL franchise player, sponsored alpha, and the most watched man in professional sports. The terms are clear. Separate bedrooms. Staged appearances only. No crossing the line between performance and reality.
Sloane knows exactly how to perform a relationship. What he doesn't know is how to stop himself from building one.
Jax didn't expect his contracted omega to rearrange his entire life, one armchair, one curtain panel, one bowl of Clement Street rice at a time. He didn't expect to notice every time Sloane's scent shifted. He didn't expect to spend eleven weeks wanting something the contract explicitly forbade. And he absolutely didn't expect a suppression batch failure, a heat, a claiming, and a paternity bond notification to reorganize everything he thought he knew about himself.
The fake relationship is over. The real one has already been under construction for months.
He just didn't realize who was building it.
A high-heat omegaverse romance featuring secret omega identity, sports alpha / contract omega, forced cohabitation, counter-bite bilateral bond, MPREG, possessive alpha who learns what belonging actually means, and an alpha willing to renegotiate every term — legally, biologically, and permanently. Each book in the Gilded Nest series concludes with an HEA and can be read as a standalone.
DNF @ 10% - love the premise of the book but don't think this writing style is for me sadly, it reads like the character is describing things like a robot. It's well written just too clinical for me to enjoy for a romance.
Reading the kindle sample I knew that I would probably DNF because the writing style was thoroughly irritating and all over the place.
I presume in part, it is meant to be precise, factual and business like, illustrating Sloane's need for control and demonstrating how he navigates the world. How this was the style for the entire book is beyond me. Jax and Sloane are different characters, with different personalities, motivations and interests. But you wouldn't have known it from reading, due to the often mix up of character point of view. I can not understand how the author or authors in this case can not keep track of what their creations have done or have said they would do. In some instances, literally a couple of pages before.
I have not made one note or highlight in this book, because I knew the moment I did, it would begin a litany of harsh criticism. The constant repetition of phrases. How many times does the reader need to reminded that Sloane hung a scarf instead of a curtain in the guest room. Why was significance given to moments, thought or actions that were immaterial?
53 mentions of what Sloane smelled like is overkill. I know he's an omega and smell is a bit deal in this universe, however stating the room smelled like him multiple times, using almost the same phrase was excruciating.
What a waste of a good plot. DNF 19%.
Just re reading this review sends me into a rage. To be avoided.
This book was horrible and it takes a lot for me to say that. I finished it only because I thought it would get better. It didn't.
The characters had zerooooooo chemistry. It was as if two pieces of plywood got together and started talking. Everything was robotic and void of depth or warmth. Every sentence was stiff and sterilized, clinical. As I said, like two objects speaking to each other.
The plot is not a plot until about 80% in and the language is almost dystopian drenched in bleach.....
Horrible, stiff and leaves you feeling like you just walked out of a cold storage space than a romance book.
Very disappointing. I won't even bother with book three. That being said, book one was better.
Read for yourselves and decide but for me this was just bad 👎🏾
A good storyline with good characters. Writing is difficult: clinical, legal, every sentence perfectly structured and measured. It lost three stars for the following: 1. The timeline was confusing, I was unable to keep track of the progress of time. Weeks can pass within a paragraph and no transition. 2. The world building was lackluster and while I grasped the themes I didn’t grasp the world/society. 3. Misplaced scenes and paragraphs. There was an entire sex scene in a random place without any build up and BEFORE the build up. Some dialogue was repeated or misplaced: mc 1 “explanation” mc 2 “tell me” and mc “sentence 1,” “sentence 2,” “sentence 1.”
This has a really good story line and there were some really good parts, but over 80% of the book is just internal dialogue with a lot of repetition so it made it hard to follow.