Jessica Hull's Reviews > Arranged

3 - 3.5 STARS

For probably 85% of this book, I was pretty certain I was reading my next 5 STAR read. I was so into it. Arranged had all the angsty push and pull of The Unwanted Wife, one of my all time favorite marriage of convenience romance novels. Calder Banks Castelo is such a jerk, he does some deplorable things and I seriously loved the book because of it. If you go read some other reviews, you can easily find out what he does and a lot of those reviews are why I bought the book and devoured it in one sitting. Angst and heartache are my jam and there was loads of it on these pages. I was ready to give this book 5 STARS very early on because of all the yummy heart twinges I was feeling.

But the end-ish of this book is what lost me. It just wasn't fleshed out the way I needed it to be and it kind of lost me. The pacing of the last 15-20% seriously just let all the air out of the balloon I was happily swept away on and that was so unbelievably disappointing. Like, I could cry because it didn't have to be that way. It was missing some serious... something. It was too swift on several fronts and I just needed more. It felt like it turned into another book, so completely out of touch with what I'd been reading for the last 4 hours and ughhhhh... I missed what was. Not because the truth came out... I was all about the truth bombs being ugly. I love a book that wrecks me. It was just the WAY things went down and came back together that just didn't work for me.

All in all, I recommend reading Arranged but, man, I'd be lying if I said it was a solid read. It was solid until it wasn't and I wish I could read it again and then just stop and make up my own ending. I'm all about the implosion of this relationship, I'm fine with the way it all went down. Basically everything after like chapter 33 was a mess and I'm disappointed. Yeah, he groveled and she made him work for it, which was great... but the pacing just didn't satisfy and the ending felt abrupt.