3.5 to 3.75 stars (TW at end of review)
Christmas Captive by Isabella Starling had a great premise, but I couldn't see the love and the timeline was confusing. Grayson Kline is a billionaire with a bit of a shady business. He sees Amicia one day when he's at the strip club she works at. Amicia is a young stripper with a dream to be a ballerina. Since she had no professional training, she is unsuccessful at getting any roles in ballets. Short on money, she learns of a place where she can auction off herself to the highest bidder. There, Grayson buys her for one evening, but offers her more money to spend the month with him, as his Christmas captive, until Christmas morning. As they spend time together, the chemistry and attraction heats up, but they both know their relationship will end on the 25th. Additionally, Amicia has a past that is catching up to her, one she hasn't told Grayson of.
The blurb sounded so good and I enjoyed certain parts of this book. I liked the idea of this elusive, playboy billionaire falling for this woman. But his switch in thinking was so sudden. And Amicia suddenly falling in love made no sense to me either because they barely spent any time together in the first half of her stay with him. I wasn't sold on their love. I also felt like Amicia's past needed to be introduced sooner, as it just randomly appeared when she first brought it up quite a bit into the book. The timeline at the end of the book, with the different time jumps were extremely confusing. I felt like chapters weren't all chronological and it made for a confusing read. The thing that confused me the most was how Grayson and Amicia's relationship ended up where it did when Grayson never admitted his love for Amicia to her before taking the next step. I thought the rope scene was great and I liked the chemistry between the two. I was also intrigued by some of the secondary characters who just disappeared. The whole situation with Georgina was a little weird. Overall, there were a lot of misses for me with this book, but it wasn't necessarily a bad read. I enjoyed certain aspects and the writing was good.
TW: explicit sexual scenes, light BDSM, description of abuse by former foster parent