GRR Reviews Beneath This Mask by Meghan March

Charlie is in New Orleans, living paycheck from paycheck in a tattoo parlor, for she has a terrible secret. Her father was the biggest scammer in the history of US, dwarfing even Madoff. He went to prison, nobody knew where the money went, and she was unable to deal with the spotlight. She disappeared, changed her name, and gotten a lot of tattoos, both to reinvent herself and hide her past. She was happy with that life... Until she met Simon. // Simon is the son of a congressman, and enjoy being back in New Orleans but he has PTSD issues from losing his friend in the skies of Middle East. Charlie is so different from any woman he knew, even as he had to keep up appearances with a different woman who's trying to figure out her own life. When Charlie found a notebook hidden in her belongings that contained code, she knew it contained clues to where the billions of money went. She knew she can only drag Simon down, but Simon will not take no for an answer... Until an ambitious reporter spotted her...

At first reading, all the emotions felt raw and powerful, but it was upon a second reading you started to notice "wait a minute..."... Charlie was very quick to get butthurt when she spotted Simon on the society pages (with that other woman), even though she accepted she can never be with him. Instead, she eventually convinced herself that she can have a fling with Simon, but not tell him anything (which obviously is when it all went pear-shaped). Simon's PTSD seems really... shallow? And sleeping with Charlie apparently cured him (however temporarily) and that just felt wrong. The two basically went back and forth, one breaks up, one makes up, it just goes back and forth. I really want to give this a better score, but I ended up with 5.5/8 (3/5 on Amazon scale)

Category: Contemporary

Primary Plot: Woman with huge secret must resist charming son of congressman for she cannot drag him down...

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

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