Review: Bought: Damsel in Distress by Lucy King

The blurb:

Billionaire's bid…

Luke Harrison is always in control. But ever since he bid for the chance to save a green-bikini–clad beauty he's felt his self-possession slipping away….

Blind date…

Independent Emily does not want rescuing—until Luke, a smoldering knight in shining armor, swoops in on his private jet and starts to change her mind!

Secret baby?

Neither is prepared for the heat between them as Emily undoes her steely-eyed billionaire—and their no-strings fling leads to pleasure beyond their imagining…

Now, I will admit that when I started this book I had some definite preconceived notions, but in my defense if you read a lot of Harlequins it's hard not to have those. Harlequins are one of my guilty pleasures and sometimes I find a gem in the batch and a lot of times, I don't. The ones that are good, though, make it worth wading through the ones that are just so much cliched junk.

When I read the opening line though, I knew my preconceived notions were gonna get knocked on their rear.

Here's the line in question:

"You must be wondering what sort of girl ends up for auction on the internet," said Emily, picking up her glass of champagne and taking a quick sip.

That had me going, What?! The internet?! No way! That hooked me.

So come to find out, our heroine's ex-fiance is getting married in France and she's invited, but really doesn't want to go. Her older sis, who's pretty much raised her, doesn't think she's getting out enough and has decided that she'll never get closure if she doesn't go and watch the loser marry some poor other girl. So she puts Emily up for auction on Ebay without telling her about it until 30 min before the winner came to pick her up. It was hilarious. She also blackmailed Emily into going by having the proceeds of the auction donated to a charity and if Emily didn't go with the guy, the charity didn't get the money.

I so liked this set up better than the usual, I'll send your brother/father/friend/cousin to jail if you don't be my wife/mistress/baby factory trope that gets used so very much in Harlequins. Don't get me wrong. I still read those and sometimes I even like them, but this felt refreshing.

The dialogue was very witty, too. Emily and Luke, our hero, would verbally spar and it was both funny and sometimes poignant as well as being practically foreplay for them.

I liked that they both had damage and that got addressed a bit in the story. I liked that Emily wasn't a virgin and happened to enjoy sex and asked for what she wanted. That, too, was a nice change of pace from all the virgin mistresses out there. They did bring in the cliche of an unexpected pregnancy and that always kinda irritates me. A woman doesn't have to get knocked up. There are plenty of kids out there. Not to mention, sometimes they use the kid to bring the couple together and then you don't feel that they would ever had made it on their own. This time they handled it pretty well. Luke didn't stay for the baby and being pregnant made Emily have to deal with some of her own personal issues.

All in all it was a very enjoyable read. It left me feeling good and not like throwing the book across the room. Hehehe.

My final grad for this is a B+.

You can buy this book here

Or here