★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Different from the other Petite Le Mort Club titles I’ve read and really well done – Ellis O. Day has quickly become my new favorite author. For quite a while, the book reads more like a romance than an erotic romance because there’s so much resistance, stubbornness and misunderstanding between this working couple, it takes them that long just to find each other’s lips. The build-up is great and the banter’s so funny – like heroine Alison, I found myself laughing constantly when I imagined hero “Gus Barker” Harker was standing there with his jaw clenched, definitely not laughing. These 2 have been working together for years. Harker is the boss. He’s been lusting after Alison for at least a year that we know about, and she has a room in his house. She doesn’t seem to share his feelings but we learn, after a long-winded ride, that she’s as attracted to him as he is to her, just doesn’t think he’d seriously want her. I think that’s the one thing that bugs me about these stories – the women tend not to think much of their looks and be insecure on that level. But they are real and relatable, and the men always lust for them hard, so you overlook it cause the writing is otherwise really good. The premise of this story is Harker, who’s rich and built a successful business, has decided he needs someone to leave it to, so he wants a baby and he’s decided he wants Alison to be the mother. He’s willing to offer her part ownership of the company if she agrees and yes, he wants to do it the old-fashioned way. Alison, who resists hard to all of the above comes around after a lot of persistence and agrees to the deal, assuming they get married, to make her mother happy, then have a quick divorce after the baby is born. Mind you, even with a contract in place, you would think as his wife she could take Harker to court and win way more than the proposed 5% he’s offering. I guess Harker really does love and trust her, stubborn as he acts almost all the time. Anyway, we swallow it cause if we didn’t, we’d have no story. After a very tense wedding and a painful first-kiss-that-wasn’t, a visit to Le Petite Mort Club wakes this bantering couple up and reminds the rest of us we are indeed reading an erotic romance novel, and it gets really good from there. It ends on a to be continued, as all of these stories do, but I got enough to satisfy me…for now. I love how author Ellis O. Day has come up with so many different scenarios and couples for this one universe and how it all flows together. Really well done – I’m looking forward to reading more of these stories.
Add Ellis O Day’s The Baby Bargain to your to-be-read list on Goodreads!