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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
I enjoyed this story from the moment I started listening to it, once I started I didn’t want to stop. Roxanne and Mateo had red hot chemistry and I loved both characters. This book was also full of characters you love to hate and I enjoyed listening to the story unfolded and learning more about these characters. Scarlette Hayes did a wonderful job narrating this story.
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Gorgeous settings, hot hate sex, enemies to lovers, marriage of convenience, inability to see how loved you are. Wine and money. Surprise brother! Found family.
A whole passel of shitty parents. Bad childhoods. Blackmail. Child abuse. Car accident.
A whole passel of shitty parents. Bad childhoods. Blackmail. Child abuse. Car accident.
I’m officially addicted to Angelina Lopez novels! I devoured this series in a few days and I absolutely love every one of them.
Lush money just had the right amount of Bass ass MC / BADDIE attitude CEO/ Marriage of convenience/ Pregnancy trope/ family drama/ traumatic past / found family and so much more!!
If you don’t have Angelina in your list of MUST READ! Please do yourself a favor and add them ✨NOW✨
Lush money just had the right amount of Bass ass MC / BADDIE attitude CEO/ Marriage of convenience/ Pregnancy trope/ family drama/ traumatic past / found family and so much more!!
If you don’t have Angelina in your list of MUST READ! Please do yourself a favor and add them ✨NOW✨
4.5 I really liked this book. It had been recommended to me, but I wasn't so sure about it at the beginning! By the end, I loved it. I did enjoy the bit of gender swapped roles in the story, and I loved that the story got stronger as I read. I'd definitely recommend it!
Hot and heartfelt, with real vulnerability from both characters, interesting side characters, great worldbuilding - this is a banger of a book!
challenging
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
4.25/5 stars
3/5 spice
Tropes:
Billionaire Businesswoman FMC
Spanish Prince MMC
Marriage of convenience
Forced proximity
Insta-lust
Hate to Love
Ice queen with a heart of gold
Caretaking
Wine making
Dual POV
This was a wild ride. Honestly, I couldn't stand Roxanne the first couple of chapters, but I was so happy that Mateo gave her a hard time. She deserved being put in her place. It's not common to read about a heroine that is unlikeable, but you also want to see her do better. She has her layers, and Mateo was good at taking them apart. There were so many great parts where he was able to bring out her vulnerability so we could see her true self. Their journey to love was a battlefield, and I was so happy to see them together in the end.
The epilogue was a fitting conclusion, and I hope I get to see a cameo of them in the next books. I had no idea Freedom, Kansas was going to be mentioned in this book. I was super excited to see this small town again since I first read it in her other books After Hours on Milagro Street and Full Moon Over Freedom.
Overall, it is a great roller coaster of a romance with lots of steam and spice. Highly recommend for fans of arranged marriage/ marriage of convenience tropes and who aren't afraid of reading about unlikeable but relatable FMCs.
3/5 spice
Tropes:
Billionaire Businesswoman FMC
Spanish Prince MMC
Marriage of convenience
Forced proximity
Insta-lust
Hate to Love
Ice queen with a heart of gold
Caretaking
Wine making
Dual POV
This was a wild ride. Honestly, I couldn't stand Roxanne the first couple of chapters, but I was so happy that Mateo gave her a hard time. She deserved being put in her place. It's not common to read about a heroine that is unlikeable, but you also want to see her do better. She has her layers, and Mateo was good at taking them apart. There were so many great parts where he was able to bring out her vulnerability so we could see her true self. Their journey to love was a battlefield, and I was so happy to see them together in the end.
The epilogue was a fitting conclusion, and I hope I get to see a cameo of them in the next books. I had no idea Freedom, Kansas was going to be mentioned in this book. I was super excited to see this small town again since I first read it in her other books After Hours on Milagro Street and Full Moon Over Freedom.
Overall, it is a great roller coaster of a romance with lots of steam and spice. Highly recommend for fans of arranged marriage/ marriage of convenience tropes and who aren't afraid of reading about unlikeable but relatable FMCs.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Child abuse, Medical content, Abandonment
Minor: Bullying, Pregnancy
Hard to read in the beginning but got better. Cute read
💰 The rundown: Billionaire CEO Roxanne wants a baby and has decided that Mateo, golden prince of an impoverished Spanish principality, is the man for the job. So she proposes an arrangement: 3 nights per month for baby-making activities and, once the mission has been accomplished, she’ll give him stacks on stacks of cash to save his kingdom.
💰 Am I glad I read it? The mixed feelings are STRONG with this one. I read Lopez’s After Hours on Milagro Street a few months ago and loved it (the FMC of Lush Money is also from Freedom!), and I was really interested to see how she played around with the billionaire, royalty, and MOC tropes, none of which I’m generally drawn to in contemporary settings. And I really liked how she upended those common tropes, and I particularly enjoyed Roxanne’s arc from the guarded, dismissive, self-isolating woman who does some truly shitty things to Mateo early in the book. It’s soapy; it’s spicy; and I enjoyed quite a lot about it.
But, unfortunately, Lopez did some weird things with Roxanne’s heritage and her character arc that I feel reinforce notions of proximity to whiteness as desirable /valuable and undermine the author’s efforts to subvert the billionaire trope by making said billionaire a woman and Mexican-American.
Come with me on a journey while I explain my issues:
It’s established at the beginning of the book that both characters look white. Mateo has a light complexion, light brown hair that gets blonde highlights in the summer (thus his Golden Prince moniker), and light brown eyes. Roxanne is described as a sexy Snow White, with black hair, “pale, perfect skin,” and blue eyes. Plenty of Spaniards and people of Mexican heritage are white(-passing). An interesting creative choice, but whatever.
The above gets a little icky when we read that Roxane selected Mateo to father her child because he is an ideal specimen, in part because of his desirable physical attributes.
We’re still going…
As we get further into the book, we learn more about Roxanne’s past, and much of her backstory, specifically pertaining to her efforts to become a billionaire CEO, has to do with trying to distance herself from her past, her heritage as a Mexican American and the daughter of a Mexican man, and the discrimination she faced because of that fact. In short, she pretty much wants to prove them all wrong. Which, cool. Fuck them assholes. To do this, Roxanne leans into her white-passing appearance. If all those white men are going to look down on her for being a woman, well, she’s not going to allow her Mexican heritage to be another reason for them to look down on her. (I note that her last name is Medina, which she uses for business.) At this point, Roxanne sees close proximity to whiteness as valuable to the advancement of her early career: “At first, it felt like a smart business move. I was already facing a massive barrier to entry; looking more white would help me jump at least one hurdle.”
THEN!
Here’s where Lopez really lost me: At 75%, we (both the reader and Mateo) learn that Roxanne wears blue contacts. Her eyes are actually brown, not blue. I have 3 key problems with this. The first is that this information is treated like a plot reveal for the reader. Thanks, I hate it. Second, and relatedly, is that because we - the reader - don’t learn about this information until 3/4 through the book, that means Roxanne has done no internal processing or unpacking of this issue. What could have been a really interesting commentary on proximity to whiteness and white privilege in business is simply ~there~. The reader believed Roxanne was white and then learns - surprise! - that she not only leaned into her appearance but actively tried to make herself look even more white (because blue eyes are peak whiteness, didn’t you know?). Third, Roxanne is *still wearing those contacts* now, as a well-established, super successful, super rich, super powerful businesswoman who no longer has to fight her way into industry.
To cap it all off, the only time this is addressed in the remaining quarter of the book is in the last chapter before the epilogue, where Roxane delivers an unplanned speech while not wearing her contacts. Her brown eyes are showing! That’s it. Roxanne never engages meaningfully with her clearly internalized belief about the desirability of whiteness, nor does she seek to connect with her Mexican heritage.
I think it’s really disappointing that since Lopez chose to make both characters pale/white the book fails to examine Roxanne’s held beliefs. Beyond this, however, I think the book also ends up kind of upholding the white billionaire romance trope that it tries to subvert. Like, the billionaire is a woman! and she’s Mexican-American! But!!!! We can’t subvert that trope ~too much~ by making her brown.
To the best of my knowledge, this book was Lopez’s debut, but it just completely threw me for a loop that it was written by the same author as Milagro Street.
***Also, Lopez uses Mateo’s Spanish heritage is some super weird ways.
💰 Rating: 🤷🏼♀️ (ambivalent)
💰 Anything else you need to know? TW/CWs for dubcon (not kinky), references to Spain’s violent colonial past, pregnancy (epilogue), child neglect/abandonment (of MC by parent), ableism
Totally appreciate the immediate jump into the mess. The book kicks off with all the stakes at your feet.
Not to all authors out there... Just go with it. Not everything needs translation. Say it and let others figure it out. Just let it be.
Not to all authors out there... Just go with it. Not everything needs translation. Say it and let others figure it out. Just let it be.