Rough start (some spoilers)
I came to this series via book 3 & enjoyed it enough that I wanted to catch up on the series. Turns out book 1 is a little... rougher.
It's got the same amusing soap opera thing going for it, but it has less of the restraint that kept the 3rd book believable enough to roll with it - plus some aspects were a little troubling.
I really don't understand from what we were told in the story, why Jacey & Easton got married. I get that they were good friends, sure, but what led them to point of deciding "till death do us part"?
I could see Jacey applying for a job at G&S in hopes of finding some sort of reconciliation with Easton's family at some level, plus desperately needing a job, & not wanting to go back to her own family for it, but I didn't really get the idea of her being willing to subject herself to their abuse as some kind of atonement.
Knox may not have intended serious harm, his coffee must not have been too hot or she would have been in an ER, but that could have been seriously bad, & keeping quiet about the spilled coffee burn? Nuh uh, that was going too far & a hard solid no. Jacey should have established limits.
And I love alpha males, but Luca's temper bordered on abusive. Trying to get rid of Jacey by making working conditions tough & unpleasant wasn't that bad (crappy but to some extent justifiable from their perspective), but the stuff that went beyond that made it more difficult to think of Luca & his brothers as good guys.
Luca & Jacey's first kiss made me laugh. It was kinda swoony and ridiculous at the same time. The clean romance alternative to hate sex? Lol.
While not explicitly broken down as such, the book is essentially in 2 parts - the 1st part was Jacey trying to keep her job & the 2nd part was the marriage of convenience. The first was entertaining melodrama, but the second was mostly just frustrating melodrama.
Luca had clearly & explicitly stated multiple times that his interest was in Jacey as well as the baby, so Jacey's cluelessness about Luca's love for her was frustrating & not particularly believable
It would have been better to end their story earlier & save the other to use as a story for other characters.
So, to sum up - it's fairly entertaining if you're in the mood for something fluffy, & don't mind putting up with some flaws - and at least I can reassure you that it does improve substantially by book 3
*Clean romance level: passionate kisses, a married couple is implied to have sex, but no graphic details are given
*A few prayerful acknowledgements of God by the protagonists, but also a handful of non-reverent uses, though at least none as curses, fwiw