"I’ll devour anything Ellie Palmer writes." —Jessica Joyce, USA Today bestselling author of The Ex Vows
A trope-filled delight of a rom com about two strangers who enter into a marriage of convenience that becomes anything but convenient.
For better or worse is just the beginning.
Lainey Davis can't wait for the day she'll be able to escape her tiny Wisconsin town. But she’s not even close to covering her health insurance premiums and pricey migraine medication, let alone saving up enough to start over some place new. That is, until Lainey learns that through the archaic legal doctrine of adverse possession, she’s inadvertently squatted her way into owning a marvel of modern architecture.
But Lainey owns only the house. The surrounding property, a lakeside money pit the previous owner used as a front to deal illegal reptiles, has been willed to Elliot Hodges, a D.C. architect who wants to rent out the place to fellow architecture lovers. Their assets are tied together, but neither can move forward without the other.
Desperate, Elliot proposes an unconventional arrangement: marry him for health insurance and in exchange, Lainey will allow him to buy her out. Win-win: Lainey will finally have a way out of town, and he’ll own the house designed by his idol. Married in name only and living together while fixing up the property, Lainey and Elliot find themselves unable to keep their hopes, dreams, or bedsheets from getting entwined. And as their connection grows, Lainey’s no longer sure what’s more terrifying: leaving Elliot behind or letting him in.
A trope-filled delight of a rom com about two strangers who enter into a marriage of convenience that becomes anything but convenient.
For better or worse is just the beginning.
Lainey Davis can't wait for the day she'll be able to escape her tiny Wisconsin town. But she’s not even close to covering her health insurance premiums and pricey migraine medication, let alone saving up enough to start over some place new. That is, until Lainey learns that through the archaic legal doctrine of adverse possession, she’s inadvertently squatted her way into owning a marvel of modern architecture.
But Lainey owns only the house. The surrounding property, a lakeside money pit the previous owner used as a front to deal illegal reptiles, has been willed to Elliot Hodges, a D.C. architect who wants to rent out the place to fellow architecture lovers. Their assets are tied together, but neither can move forward without the other.
Desperate, Elliot proposes an unconventional arrangement: marry him for health insurance and in exchange, Lainey will allow him to buy her out. Win-win: Lainey will finally have a way out of town, and he’ll own the house designed by his idol. Married in name only and living together while fixing up the property, Lainey and Elliot find themselves unable to keep their hopes, dreams, or bedsheets from getting entwined. And as their connection grows, Lainey’s no longer sure what’s more terrifying: leaving Elliot behind or letting him in.
Titel: Married With Benefits
Author: Ellie Palmer
Publisher
Expected Publication Date:
Expected Publication Date:
Review:
Thank you to Putnam/G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this title to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Ellie Palmer quickly moved into my auto-read/auto-buy author nook when I read her first book. She hooked me and reeled me in. So I knew I would love anything else she writes. And I wasn't wrong. This book hit me with all the feels!
Lainey Davis makes her way in the world one moment at a time: scheming and finding any way she can manage to make a buck. She wants to escape her small town in Wisconsin but just can't find a break. Especially when it comes to affording the medicine for her chronic condition. Enter Elliott Hodges, an architect from Washington D.C. who has been willed the property on which the architectural genius of a house Lainey has been living in all her life resides. The two strike a deal to make some money, get Lainey the medication she needs, and eventually sign Lainey's house over to Elliott by agreeing to get married, in name only. But with the close proximity of living together and fixing the house up as a rental, the two find their arrangement melting into something more than just a marriage with benefits.
Oh boy can Palmer write characters who you just cannot help but love. Lainey is a bit of a con-artist/hustler with a penchant for being artistic. She fights her way through life in the small town where everyone knows her, and her grandmother's, names. She's spunky and easily manipulates situations to her advantage. But her chronic condition for which she cannot afford medication is often debilitating, keeping her from doing what she must to survive. Tack on the underlying feeling of her unworthiness and you have a recipe for a woman who needs to be shown just how wonderful she truly is. Palmer handles the chronic condition with great care, and truthfulness. Being the wife of someone who suffers from this condition, it was easy to relate to what Lainey was going through and how hard it would be to stay on top of it without having the proper insurance to cover the costly medication needed to do so.
Elliott, OH MY! He's a golden retriever/cinnamon roll for sure. While at first he comes off as a little hard around the edges, he has such tenderness about him. How he cares for Lainey in her times of need is top notch romance! He was my favorite character in this story. And he, too, has some underlying trauma that makes him rigid and somewhat predictable. But he slowly sheds that rigidness to show his soft underbelly.
Lainey and Elliott has undeniable chemistry in this book. You can feel it from their first encounter but also in the way they banter. Every encounter they have opens them up more and more to each other until they cannot fight what has been brewing between them.
Add a cast of characters who ramp up the banter but also give great background and the story rounds out well.
I will say there were a few unresolved plot lines I would have liked to see more about including Lainey's relationship with both her mother and (potential) father. While these characters are talked about or introduced, the issues surrounding the relationships with them never come to a head or lead anywhere and this was a bit frustrating. I also felt the story wrapped up a little too easily for me. The tension created by the third act break up didn't really coincide well with the resolution. I needed more to happen. More fleshing out of the ultimate consequences surrounding the issue that caused it.
But overall, these things did not bring down my rating for the book. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters. The pacing was fast and kept me turning pages to find out how things would work out in the end. Palmer remains an author I will continue to read. I cannot wait to see what she might come up with next!
Author:
Ellie Palmer is a lifelong lover of love stories, a carrier of the BRCA1 mutation, and a prototypical Midwesterner who routinely apologizes to inanimate objects when she bumps into them. When she’s not writing romantic comedies featuring delightfully messy characters, she’s at home in Minnesota, eating breakfast food, watching too much reality television, and triple texting her husband about their son.
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