You Can Have Manhattan by P. DangelicoMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sydney Evans has risen above her abusive childhood to become Frank Blackstone's right hand and Head of Legal at Blackstone Holdings. Then Frank drops a bombshell, he's dying and wants Sydney to succeed him but the Board might not endorse his decision so he wants Sydney to marry his son Scott, they can divorce after three years. Although Sydney would love to be CEO of Blackstone Holdings she wants to make Frank happy more than anything else, after all he is the closest thing she has ever had to a father-figure and he gave her a chance when no-one else would.
Ten years ago when Sydney met Scott he was a drunken party-boy manwh*re, he called every woman babydoll and acted like it was the 1950s. What Sydney doesn't realise is that Scott had a come-to-Jesus moment a few years back and now is a respectable businessman with his own environmentally neutral ranch in Wyoming. He has steadfastly refused to return to Manhattan and the family business, avoiding his father until he is blackmailed into marriage with the Ice Queen.
I love me a marriage of convenience, especially an opposites-attract romance and this definitely delivered. Scott is determined that Sydney will back out of their sham marriage so he does everything in his power to make her life miserable. Little does he know that she is made of sterner stuff!
I love P Dangelico's novels and I requested an ARC of this novel from NetGalley (didn't get one :( ) but there was something about this novel that wasn't the full P Dangelico experience. Maybe it was because I struggled to reconcile Sydney's version of Frank Blackstone with the way he behaved. He was her mentor and supported her meteoric rise and yet he also seemed to hire a whole load of misogynist a-holes who tried to undermine her at every turn. Also he blackmails his son and his pseudo-daughter and puts them both in an untenable situation for his own purposes. Similarly, I found Scott's motivations to be confusing. He has grown and evolved from the petulant party boy but then behaves like a teenager to Sydney (getting drunk at their Vegas wedding, disabling the hot water etc)(view spoiler). Overall, I didn't love Scott as much as I should have.
Nevertheless, if you want funny, sexy, charming, intelligent romance P Dangelico still delivers in spades - her mediocre is better than most people's best.
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