I’m not quite sure where to start this….
I was excited to read this, but unfortunately I couldn’t connect with the characters as this was written in a way that “tells” you the story as opposed to “showing” you.
The characters' inner monologue explained what they were doing, and rarely was what they were feeling, smelling, seeing, all the details that bring characters to life on the pages weren’t shared, making it impossible for me to immerse myself inside this world.
I didn’t feel a connection between Mason and Nina, but that could have been due to the fact that other than thinking each other were hot, not many other feelings they brought out of one another were shared. There were several things that transpired between them that were purely toxic and cemented in my head that they shouldn’t even be together.
A misunderstanding had Nina running from Mason, and in instance I understood why she accepted his apology, but there were several others that I had wanted her to walk away from him for good. Any sort of confrontation between them and his immediate reaction was to spew vile ignorant things at her, more than once.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
The subplot taking place alongside Mason and Nina’s romance was a bit of a mess. In chapter 1 it says that Nina had met Erin at a cafe 12 months before this story took place.
Later in the book “Erin” comes and visits, but from doing some digging Mason finds that the real Erin passed away 6 weeks before, but there’s never an explanation on how Cara used this person’s identity for an entire year before the woman died, and bought the studio 1 week before she met Mason.
When Mason is explaining things to Nina he says he took Cara home from the bar 14 months before which doesn’t follow the previously mentioned timeline.
There was also an instance where he says, “I thought I could trust her, but look what a piece of work she turned out to be.”
But in his “remembering” while explaining things to Nina, he had only met her that night and his inner monologue explains that he knows she’s like everyone else, meaning eager to please because he’s rich.
There’s a whole thing that happens and she starts blackmailing him, and what she asks for doesn’t make any sense. She wants money and his mother’s piano, her reasoning, “he used her,” it was clearly a one night stand in which she was fully on board with. Then she “hid it” inside the studio.
It just didn’t really add up, as there’s no explanation on this woman that has been conning rich men for years, bought a building, and then meets a stranger in a coffee shop and tells her she needs to rent it out within 3 weeks.
It ends in a cliffhanger and honestly, I have no interest in knowing what happens.