GRR Reviews Deception (International Romance Series by Mona Ingram

Deception is a contemporary romance that's mainly about initial impressions being wrong, but also about forgiveness. However, some of the reactions from the characters came across as melodramatic rather than really morally conflicting.

To recap... Former model Justine Phillips quit her runway life after her mother got cancer. A promising treatment that initially showed results suddenly resulted in her mother's death and Justine was devastated. She chose a different career path altogether. She had just arrived in twon to help her best friend when her best friend committed her to be auctioned off for a dinner at a charity benefit event. She chose to drastically change her appearance and appear as Jasmine, and a big bidder, Alex, also won her heart, as he's gorgeous, nice, charming, and more. That was, until she learned that he is the head of OmegaPharma... the company that made the treatment that killed her mother. Justine is now confused... She wanted Alex Melrose, but can she consort with the person who basically killed her mother? Is he in love with Jasmine or Justine? Justine had to appear as herself to Alex, and see if he's still interested, and slowly learned that what she thought was the truth about her mother's death... was nothing like what she thought... but even as she fell for the kind-hearted Alex as Justine, Alex learned the truth about Jasmine...

Some of the plot points barely make sense. The initial parts are fine, the meetcute at the auction was good. As was the conflict there. The problem was the escalation... What's with the secret identity and failure to reveal? It's almost a trope that it's NEVER the right time to talk about such things, and something ALWAYS happens to interrupt the confession and then, of course, the person who was supposed to hear it gets angry when he found out or figured out the deception. A lot of the travel seems almost superfluous, in fact. What was the point of traveling to Africa to help a charity when donating money to build things and hire locals and teach them skills seem to be a much more efficient way of doing things? And doesn't the big CEO have any sort of security team?

Category: Contemporary

Primary Plot: Woman is conflicted between wanting a rich man she connected with, and rejecting the man whom may be responsible for her mother's death

Tropes: auction, different worlds, disguise, enemies to lovers

Overall Rating:  3/5