05/22/2023
Familiar in its thrust but singular in its details, this collaboration between Huntington (Darling Venom) and Shen (Vicious) announces its ambitions from the first lines: “I always assumed my life was a romance novel,” protagonist Dallas Townsend declares, before adding that this, of course, was a mistake: her life is edging more towards horror. What she misses in that declaration: her story's playful spirit of comedy. A sass-mouthed, romance-reading virgin in a highly conservative and patriarchal Southern town who only agrees to go to a debutante ball for the dessert table, Dallas is engaged to a man who doesn’t excite her. But her bumptious, scandalous introduction to megabillionaire Romeo Costa, who looks like “menace decanted into a Kiton suit,” upends everything. Romeo, a competitor of Dallas’s fiancée, decides he’ll marry her instead—and Dallas’s father agrees to the match.
Dallas feels she has to go along with it, though she won’t go quietly: “I’m not gonna be a headache. I’m going to be, at the very least, a deadly brain tumor,” she says, before eventually spitting out her “I do.” The novel that follows lives up to the promise of her irresistible dialogue, as the seasoned authors offer an extravagant, often darkly comic slow-burn romance of a coerced bride’s efforts to maintain autonomy—at times through sexy games at Romeo’s expense. (The whipped cream scene is a sticky standout.)
Despite the “Romeo” in the title, the classic story powering this over-the-top but continually engaging tale is “Beauty and the Beast.” After many spirited chapters of them at odds, written with playful energy, the seemingly monstrous groom softens and reveals the backstory that made him this way, and the unyielding bride whom he calls Shortbread begins to see more in him besides fuel for her fury. The sex, when it comes, is vivid and connected to feeling. The novel’s long, and begins to feel so in its second half, but the authors keep the chatter and surprises lively as they conjure adventures in Humvees, private jets, corporate takeovers, and even wilder ideas.
Takeaway: Engaging coerced-marriage romance pulsing with sass and surprise.
Comparable Titles: R.S. Grey’s To Have and to Hate, Melanie Moreland’s The Contract.
Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A- Marketing copy: A
