This was hard to rate because as infuriating as I found this book, it was a page-turner for me.
What follows is a very detailed summary of the book, simply because I have to!
Okay, FMC and her sister are pretending to be servants in the hero’s household because they ran away after almost murdering their evil stepfather who was trying to rape the younger sister, the MMC finds this out because their description is in the newspaper, when he confronts her, she still lies about who she is then she seduces him
(oh yeah, she previously made him swear as a gentleman to stay away from her and then got mad that he did)
then the next morning he finds out that she’s noble, the stepfather comes and takes them away and whips the FMC. The hero comes to the house asks to marry her but she refuses - even though this would protect her and her sister from their stepfather and he points out she could be pregnant (at this point I was like, ok so this is ONE OF THOSE heroines)
finally, he convinces her to consent, convinces the stepfather, so what does she do? Leaves a note for the hero to come to her bed at night, but has her little sister (who is traumatized by having her stepfather sneak into bed) sleep in her bed, so the hero gets into bed with the sister and the FMC SCREAMS drawing everyone to the house and says, oh look he’s compromised her, he has to marry her. (This was her way of getting him out of marrying her - who she insists he doesn’t want and getting her sister away from the father even though the hero could’ve done that anyway!) also, ew why are you foisting a man you slept with on your sister?
The hero finds a young man who had hit it off with the little sister previously to marry her off to and the hero marries the FMC instead on the day of the wedding BECAUSE THAT’S WHO HE WANTS TO MARRY.
ok so even after the wedding the FMC repeatedly lies to the hero and when some of her lies are found out, she tells half-truths, and she sneaks around constantly (she thinks her father was murdered by the stepfather and is looking for her dead mom’s journal)
meanwhile the hero is insecure by how much he loves her and focuses on his work (he was going to marry an heiress but now deals business instead) so the FMC is bored and has a male friend escort her everywhere, causing gossip, the hero asks her not to go out with him anymore because of her reputation and how it makes him uncomfortable.
what does she do? She starts trying to make him jealous on purpose with this man! One night she even goes sneaking around in a dangerous neighborhood so her man friend accompanies her for protection - the hero hears about this from the servants talking and gets it confirmed by a detective, so then he’s like you know what, I made this girl marry me i’ll let her go
he confronts her, she lies again, so he says ok well I know you were with him, we’ll annul the marriage, and then she weakly tries to say oh no but he’s just a friend! (why would he believe her?) then instead of talking to him more makes him have sex with her, he leaves her and she doesn’t fight for him at all, thinks that he never wants this marriage anyway blah blah blah
there’s a whole side story with the hero trying to recover his POW cousin, the FMC wheedles her way into the rescue plan, the hero gets shot saving her, he wants to give her a second chance thinking it’s his fault she cheated since he was too busy to pay attention to her, but he makes her swear to remain faithful.
also, he figures out she’s pregnant, though he’s not sure he’s the father (we know she never slept with anyone else).
Oh but the FMC finds out her familial home is being sold and wants to look one more time for that journal so she sneaks away AGAIN but leaves him a note that an evil maid tries to dispose of - so when the hero comes home, he’s freaking out like I can’t believe I trusted her again
luckily he finds the note and races to her rescue because yay, she found the evidence and boo, confronts her villain stepfather on the spot, so now she’s got a pistol aimed at her.
Hero reopens his gunshot wound from the previous rescue but saves the day and tells the FMC he doesn’t care whose baby it is, he loves her and wants to be with her and he was buying the home for a gift for her!
At the end, his friend comes by with confirmation that the fmc’s supposed lover is gay and was indeed pretending to make the hero jealous and pay more attention to his wife <<< people reviewing this book are actually mad it took this to finally convince the hero despite all the gaslighting he’s endured from the FMC
A couple of caveats are, the FMC is supposed to be smart, she always beats him at chess, not sure why she behaves so stupidly the entire book.
And the hero was initially attracted to the blonde younger sister (ick!) when they came to work at his house but within a few pages he concluded she’s too childish and started pursuing the FMC instead because he loved her strength and intelligence.
It was bad that he threw himself into work about of fear of becoming too attached to her, but like, she literally never gave him any indication of her feelings for him outside of the bedroom, meanwhile he took care of her.
Writing was fine, characters didn’t seem super complex though, always too mad to pay attention to the sex scenes but apparently they were passionate, I will give this author another chance.