Money makes the world go round -- that's what twenty-something Grace Reeve is learning. Stuck in a grind where everyone's ahead apart from her, she's partied out, disillusioned, and massively in debt. If she's dumped by another rock-band wannabe, squashed by anyone else at her cut-throat fashion job, or chased by any more bailiffs, Grace suspects she'll fall apart. So when older, sexy and above all, wealthy art-dealer Vaughn appears, she's intrigued against her will. Could she handle being a sugar daddy's arm-candy? Soon Grace is thrown into a world of money and privilege, at Vaughn's beck and call in return for thousands of pounds in luxurious gifts, priceless clothes -- and cash. She's out of her depth. Where's the line between acting the trophy girlfriend, and selling yourself for money? And, more importantly, whatever happened to love
My thoughts
I must admit that I was unsure when I started this book. It has been a long long while since I've read a book for grown ups and when I saw it was compared to pretty woman I was not impressed because I hated that film (yes I know).
However despite all those initial worries I loved it. Grace is a 20 something girl living and working in London scraping by on minimum wage but with an expensive shopping habit that has left her in debt. I must admit to start with this initially put me off her straight away but as the book went on I warmed to Grace a lot and ended up as her very own unofficial cheerleader.
At the start of the book Grace gets dumped, on her birthday, whilst in her favourite department store by her loser boyfriend. Whist in the middle of a near breakdown she is whisked out of the shop by a stranger and taken by this seemingly charming man for champagne and cake and once she's done she never expects to hear from him again and it therefore comes as a total shock when an extremely expensive Marc Jacobs handbag is delivered to her at work courtesy of the handsome stranger. She meets him again and he offers her an outrageous proposal: to be his paid mistress. Grace, while initially hesitant, can't resist the lure of the amount of cash she is being offered agrees to the proposal and suddenly finds herself living a strange double life as the mistress of a high end art dealer jet setting around the world, shopping in designer boutiques and squeezing in trips to the spa of a lunch time to ensure she looks perfectly groomed.
Without giving too much away what I particularly loved about this book was the ever complicated relationship between Grace and Vaughn. She is so naive at times that I wanted to shake her and he could be a complete arsehole but underneath it all the was something that kept me hooked and rooting for them as a couple. I loved the fights, the sexy times, the times when they were adorably sweet with each other and the scenes with we're frankly hilarious with the complete insanity of the situations the characters were dealing with.
To cut a long story short I loved it. I have since ordered everything by Sarra Manning I can get my hands on! Perfect stuff!
Comments
~Ailsa