Tag: billionaire

Review: Be True (At Last, The Beloved Series #1) by Stella Starling

All the characters in this were great.

5 out of 5 stars

Kindle Unlimited. 406 pages. Published January 6th 2017 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Blurb:

“When we’re in public, you’re mine.”

Outspoken, outgoing, and outrageously out, Trevor Rogers isn’t one to say no when opportunity comes knocking. And jetting off to New York City to play the part of reclusive billionaire Logan Carter’s boyfriend for a Valentine’s Day publicity campaign? That’s not just a yes, but oh hell yes.

When Logan Carter’s business partner, the founder of the popular dating app bLoved, starts receiving death threats and has to stay out of the public eye, Logan is thrust into the limelight. The only problem? Logan doesn’t do public. He also learned the hard way never to mix business with pleasure… no matter how tempting someone like Trevor might make it.

Trevor doesn’t want to be tied down, and Logan isn’t interested in opening up… but if falling in love is all just an act, why does saying “I love you” start to feel so real?

Be True is a gay romance novel of approximately 93,000 words that contains a bossy billionaire, a failed attempt at an utterly impossible sex position, and two men who are destined to discover that the love neither wanted is exactly what each of them needs. It has a Happily Ever After ending, no pesky cliffhangers, and can be read as a standalone… but if you enjoy Trevor and Logan’s story, be sure to keep an eye out for the other two books in the series! Enjoy! 

Likes:

  • All the characters, even the minor ones.
  • The plot.
  • Prologue really sold the reason why Logan closed himself off for so long.
  • All the sass.
  • The perfect, lovey-dovey epilogue that gave me all the feels.
  • Hot and sweet in equal measures.
  • A great start to a series.
  • Low angst.

Dislikes:

  • That All I Want isn’t technically a part of the series so I didn’t read it first.
  • Too much internal monologue.

This is the kind of book that I got a Kindle Unlimited subscription to read. It was perfect. Sweet and hot and full of colorful characters. I think I smiled through the entire second half of the book.

The book’s trope – pretend boyfriends who end up as a real couple – isn’t my favorite, but Starling made it shine. The plot worked great from beginning to end, and I loved that Logan and Trevor had a connection before the story started, even if it was a minor connection.

Trevor was a whirlwind of color, sass, and innuendos. Logan had more walls than Fort Knox. They shouldn’t have worked, especially since neither was looking for a forever relationship. But right from the beginning of the book it’s obvious that these two are going to have an amazing relationship. I’ve read some books where the characters don’t have a spark. Logan and Trevor had a sky full of fireworks, both in the bedroom and just being out and about together.

I will admit that the inner monologue, especially when both men were trying to remind themselves again and again that their relationship was fake, weighed the story down in the first half. A few sentences to reiterate would have been fine, but there were paragraphs. It slowed the momentum and made me skim a bit. Then the two finally gave in and hit the sheets and the momentum picked right back up.

I do wish that the standalone book All I Want was officially added to the series. Elliot and Ash show up multiple times in this book and I was a bit annoyed that I didn’t know their whole story. Especially because now I’m torn about whether to go back and read about them or hurry on to the next book in the series. I want to do both because if the quality is going to be as good as this book, I’m sure to love the others.

Be sure to check out the reviews for Be Mine (At Last, The Beloved Series #2), Be Loved (At Last, The Beloved Series #3), the series review, and All I Want, which has some of the same characters but isn’t technically a prequel.