A summer fling or something more?
In this Billionaires for the Rose Sisters story, Jessie Rose is shocked by the chemistry she feels when she meets billionaire Joel in Mustique. She’s come looking for escape, and brooding Joel’s not looking for anything permanent, but they can’t deny their fling is dangerously close to being a temptation they might not be able to walk away from…
| Title: | Billionaire’s Island Temptation |
| Author: | Rachael Stewart |
| Series: | Billionaires for the Rose Sisters (Book 1) |
| Pages: | 217 |
| Category / Genre(s): | Harlequin / Mills & Boon True Love |
| Trope(s): | Forced / Close Proximity Opposites Attract Billionaire Romance |
| Point of View: | Third Person, Past Tense, Dual Viewpoint (H & h) |
| Location: | Mustique, St Vincent and the Grenadines |
| HEA: | ✔️ |
| Release Date: | 2nd March, 2023 |
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Emotional and delicious
I always look forward to a new Rachael Stewart story as no matter the storyline, she always manages to capture my attention and find a away to touch my heart with her characters and their lives. This book is the first story in a new duo (not a duet – each story will and does stand alone and is about a separate couple) about two sisters finding love with their lovely billionaires.
We first meet our heroine, Jessie, as she heads to the beautiful island of Mustique in the Caribbean to start a healing holiday in a friend’s luxurious home. Immediately we get to know and understand Jessie and part of her back story. She’s recently lost her mum, suffered a bad breakup and needs time to recharge and relax. She’s an anxious person who’s lost some of her spark in life and, in hindsight, it’s quite surprising that not for a single second did I have a bad thought about Jessie. She was a great heroine.
While also harbouring a decent amount of baggage, our hero, Joel, is definitely more layered than Jessie. While Jessie is more straight-forward, Joel has become so adept at hiding his true feelings that everything’s a bit of a tangled mess. But he’s still a fantastic hero and someone I love to see get their chance at happiness – someone who believes that they don’t deserve it. Like Jessie, it’s impossible not to fall in love with Joel – for his tortured soul, his boyish charm and the kind and caring man he is. He’s definitely swoon worthy hero material.
“…how could you not give 5 stars to a book that left you emotionally drained but oh so satisfied?”
I would normally be angry about two main characters with the same first initials as I often find it strangely complicated when that occurs. Not so with Jessie and Joel, thankfully, although I am glad that housekeeper June was barely mentioned after her introduction! But I digress. As a couple, Joel and Jessie were perfect for each other. Joel helped Jessie become free and wild while Jessie in turn helped steady and ground Joel. That’s not to say that they didn’t have their wild times together, too, and while the sex is mainly behind doors, it fits perfectly with the overall ambiance of the story. (Not to say that I wouldn’t have enjoyed reading about Joel and Jessie’s shenanigans – I know that Ms Stewart writes some good and dirty sex scenes!)
The writing, as always, is exemplary. I always try to make a point of analysing the story as I read, to find out just how I’m sucked in to the story so completely – but quickly find myself immersed and I forget I’m reading and just live in the world that’s been created for me. And that’s not just because the thought of a tropical island – even with a tropical storm – would be divine! This is very obvious in this story as the emotional punch from this story is raw! I haven’t experienced any of the grief, loss, guilt etc that our characters have gone through (thankfully), so I naively thought that I wouldn’t be as emotionally invested with our characters. Cut to me rocking and weeping and making weird ugly sob sounds. So yeah, it packs a wallop.
I have to be honest – I toyed with giving this book 4 stars instead of the 5 I ultimately went with. The reason why – those emotions. They slayed me and I found myself a sobbing, bubbling mess on occasion while reading through the most emotive of passages. But then I realised, giving this book 4 stars would be like giving a decadent chocolate cake 4 stars simply because I ate too much of it since it was so delicious. So it couldn’t really be anything other than 5 stars. And I mean, how could you not give 5 stars to a book that left you emotionally drained but oh so satisfied? Bring on Hannah’s story.
*I received this book in exchange for my honest review.*
Rachael Stewart adores conjuring up stories for the readers of Harlequin Mills & Boon and Deep Desires Press, with tales varying from the heartwarmingly romantic to the wildly erotic.
She’s been writing since she could put pen to paper as the stacks of scrawled on A4 sheets in her loft will attest to, and the lovingly bound short stories that her father would run off at work and proudly share out with his colleagues. Thinking it was a pipe dream to be published one day, she pursued a sensible career in business but she was really play-acting, achieving the appropriate degree and spending many years in the corporate world where she never truly belonged. Always happiest when she was sat at her laptop in the quiet hours tapping out a story or two. And so here she is, a published author, her full-time pleasure, a dream come true.
A Welsh lass at heart, she now lives in Yorkshire with her husband and three children, and if she’s not glued to her laptop, she’s wrapped up in them or enjoying the great outdoors seeking out inspiration.
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Billionaires for the Rose Sisters Series
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