A miss for me
When the hero's ex influences the plot from start to finish, it certainly puts a damper on things. Beyond the complete and utter lack of communication between this newly married couple, it felt like every time I started to get into the story, the hero's ex would be mentioned again in some way that would be totally off-putting. She's kinda/sorta the reason they got married, she's kinda/sorta the reason their sex life was front and center, she's kinda/sorta the reason why they continued fighting... it all felt kinda/sorta toxic, and just too much. I'll be the first to admit that this series has been uneven for me (I loved Juniper Hill though!), but I was excited for this particular installment. It features tropes that are some of my favorites, so it SHOULD have been a home run. And it did not take long at all to realize that just wasn't the case.
The story follows Eloise and Jasper, two near-strangers who drunkenly decide to get married while in Vegas. While the two are loosely connected by Eloise's family, they hadn't spent any time together before getting hitched. So it's no surprise that they both woke up with regrets, and an annulment seems to be in their future. Unfortunately, Eloise has been trying to show her parents that she's responsible enough to run the family hotel by herself, and getting drunkenly married in Vegas is probably not the way to do it. Jasper has his own reasons for wanting to put on a happy front, so the two agree to fake their relationship for the foreseeable future. But as these two newlyweds move in together and continue to heat up the sheets, they realize that there might be more to their relationship than either expected.
On paper, this sounds right up my alley. I love a good Vegas wedding romance, fake relationships are my favorite, and I've enjoyed other installments in the series. However, something was off about this one from the start. Eloise and Jasper don't communicate with each other for so long that it would feel like a spoiler to tell you when they finally get their act together, lol. That doesn't seem to stop them from banging as much as possible, so it felt like an f-buddies situation between spouses that transformed into love somewhere along the way. I wish we'd seen more of the transformation. Instead, a significant chunk of the story is devoted to references to Jasper's previous relationship, and every piece we discovered just made me cringe more and more. It felt like that toxic relationship drove much of the toxicity in present day, and these two couldn't escape that old situation. Again, it'd be spoiling major parts of the storyline to go into detail, but I was really not comfortable with just how much Jasper's ex influenced the evolution of Eloise and Jasper's marriage. I was at least considering a 3-star rating until the final few scenes, which were simply unnecessary. Like... that drama did not need to happen at all. So, I really wanted to get into this, but there were near-constant roadblocks getting in the way.
Audio note: Not a fan of the audio either, sorry! I listened to both Indigo Ridge and Juniper Hill on audio, and those were both so well done that I didn't hesitate to dive into the audio for this one. The female narrator, Lucy Rivers, was fine - not a favorite, but fine. Lance Greenfield, on the other hand, was awful. His narration made Jasper feel like a caricature; a complete over-performance that made me dislike the audio immediately. Since the audio ended up releasing about a week before the ebook, I stuck with it longer than I would've liked - and finished the book up with the text version. If you can handle Greenfield's voice, then the audio itself is well done. It's also the perfect runtime for bingeing, though the high steam level/frequent spicy scenes don't make it a good choice for a workday listen. I don't really recommend the book as a whole, and I can't give the audio my stamp of approval either.