GRR Review: Juniper Smoke by Sadia Ash

Juniper Smoke by Sadia Ash is a saga of love between two very different people, drawn together by circumstances, and torn apart by secrets. This book is very long, at 700+ pages, as it's basically parts 1 and 2 of their love, but the author has yet to complete part 3 which will conclude the story. This book ends... on a rather dubious note, so beware of that.

Juniper is a sassy and nerdy museum senior curator with an autistic twin brother that tied her to her home in Ann Arbor and afraid of all men (due to experience in high school). She met Kyle Paxton, a tech mogul with an extremely dysfunctional family, and her world changed. Kyle was deeply wounded by his own dark past with an ex-GF named Chloe, and came up with a system of 6 month companion system: all companions have to sign a NDA, then a contract that set an expiration date on the relationship, and his companions are all beautiful and well compensated. And he wanted Juniper to be his next. Juniper saw the system as extremely exploitative, trying to put an expiration date on feelings, and refused, even though Kyle was the only one she thought she would want. As Juniper eventually gave in to Kyle's wooing attempts even as he realized his system would not work on her, Juniper started to discover secrets about Kyle that can destroy their relationship forever.

I enjoy the constant push-pull between the two characters even as I realized this is just another variation of "small town girl falls for billionaire", but this variation was so well done and devoid of the usual tropes (or so well disguised and polished I didn't care) I find the character dynamics fascinating. I guess I was hoping for a slightly faster pace (as some of the stuff does drag a bit) and an HEA that I can't give this a 5/5.

Category: Contemporary

Primary Plot: Museum curator afraid of men falls for the rich tech mogul with a dysfunctional family, who has serious reservations about any relationship...

Overall Rating: 4/5