Illegitimate Tycoon - Janette Kenny
Mills and Boon Modern Special Release
Harlequin Mills and Boon, 2011
ISBN: 9780263889680
My rating
From the back cover:
"Rafael... Brooding. Proud. Outcast.
Always an outsider, Rafael spent his life looking in on his privileged Wolfe siblings, a boy in the shadows. And so, determined to create the lifestyle and family illegitimacy denied him, Rafael punishingly worked his way to the top. His marriage to beautiful supermodel Leila was the icing on the cake of success!
Now his marriage is crumbling and the vows he took seem in vain. Rafael chased a rainbow - but made his wife feel as though she was never more than a trophy... Now it will take all of his courage to win his wife back..."
This is the sixth book in the BAD BLOOD series.
The hero Rafael and his wife Leila, the heroine, meet for the first time in 8 months due to their careers taking them away from each other. Rafael is looking forward to spending the week with Leila as he has missed her terribly and wants to finally start trying for the family he longs for. Rafael spent his childhood watching his siblings be together and was never acknowledged by his father. When he and Leila are together he feels complete, only now he feels Leila distancing herself from him and becoming more and more obsessed with her career. Leila, a famous model, is guilt ridden around Rafael, she suffered a miscarriage a year ago, which she believes to be her fault due to her past issues with anorexia, she also never told Rafael about it. Leila has fears she will never be able to have children and is afraid that Rafael will no longer want to be with her, whereas Rafael thinks that Leila has changed her mind about wanting a family and is only interested in her career.
Usually when a romance novel has a married couple as the hero and heroine they are separated or perhaps near to divorcing. That's not the case here, Rafael and Leila have a relatively happy, albeit distant, marriage. This is a different angle and I found it interesting and enjoyable to read.
Rafael is caring and devoted to Leila, but I found his tendency to dictate what she could or could not do a little annoying. He is desperate to have the happy family he feels he missed out on as a child, it seems a little bit of an obsession, and I think he was lucky to have missed out on some of the horrors the Wolfe family went through. Leila was well written, her issues with anorexia were handled with sensitivity and I liked how she really wanted to make a success out of herself. I did feel uncomfortable with the fact that she kept the miscarriage from Rafael.
This is a story about the dangers of couples not communicating in marriage and was interesting, if a little frustrating, to read. I did like the angle of Rafael's experiences of being external, so to speak, to the Wolfe dramas, and I think it added more depth to the whole series.
An enjoyable read.
This book will be out on general sale in the UK in July, and is available now from the Mills and Boon UK website. In the US this book will be titled 'The Trophy Wife' and will be released in December.
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