The Marriage Bargain by Jennifer Probst

Alexa needs love and money, and not necessarily in that order.   Her parents are about to lose her childhood home, overwhelmed by debts from her father’s medical expenses, with a younger brother in college, and two teenage sisters still at home.  Alexa has sunk every penny into her bookstore, which is just edging into the black.    She doesn’t have a dime to spare to help her family, so she half jokingly performs a love spell that will supposedly bring her the man of her dreams to her door, complete with one hundred fifty thousand dollars.  Instead of a man at her door, she finds her best friend Maggie.

Maggie’s brother Nick needs to marry in one week in order to inherit the architectural company he has put his soul into.  All his dreams, everything he has ever cared about, hinges on owning Dreamscape.  He just needs to be married for a year to someone he can trust, who won’t disrupt the calm life he’s worked so hard to build.  When Maggie tells him about Alexa, he is optimistic.  He grew up with her.  Who better to trust in a short term, contract marriage, than a childhood pal?

I normally don’t like the whole contract marriage theme.  This worked for me though because Alexa and Nick know each other.  They’d grown up together.  Alexa has remained close friends with Nick’s sister even into adulthood.  It’s so unbelievable when a character agrees to marry a stranger responding to an ad in the paper, or someone she literally runs into on the street.  The history between these two allowed me to overcome my instinctive reaction and enjoy the book.

The characters in this novel worm their way into your heart from the first page.  Alexa is artsy, impulsive, and fun.  Her family is big, loud and loving, and you can clearly imagine her as the kind of childhood friend you’d keep into adulthood.  Nick is from an emotionally distant, wealthy family.  Even with the lack of parental affection, Nick clearly has fond childhood memories of eating cookies at Alexa’s house, playing with the two girls, and teasing them horribly as older boys do.  The back stories, with memories both happy and painful, are woven skillfully into the novel from both points of view.   I actually laughed out loud at points.  Nick awkwardly assisting a toddler with a bathroom matter at a busy family party.  Alexa’s and Nick’s passionate and philosophical argument around baseball.  And a hysterical incident involving some animal shelter dogs.

The sexual tension is dynamically built to the breaking point.  I seriously thought I’d have to go take a cold shower at a few points in the novel.

The only criticism I have is that I wish the ending had been drawn out a bit longer.  When the crisis in the relationship occurred, it would have been nice to see how each of the characters dealt with it, rather than such a quick resolution.    Even so, the writing is clever and funny, the characters have depth, and the sensuality is hot enough to blow the shoes right off your feet.  Four stars.