This book is an audible original and is included in the plus catalogue on audible at the time of this review.
🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 2/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read A Very Good Bad Idea yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Two competing real estate developers. One dead old woman. One wildly stupid will. And me, getting increasingly angry for two full days.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Setup
Clarabelle is dead. She’s old, she’s gone, and apparently everyone is celebrating — because she owned Block 42, Lot 17, the most coveted oceanfront property in Shore Haven. Both Damon Burke (Burke Construction) and Jade Buchanan (competing real estate developer, works with her father and brothers in what I can only describe as an incredibly toxic work environment) had cozied up to Clarabelle over the years. Both of them thought she willed the property to them personally.
Turns out she left it to both of them.
The Will
Here are the terms of Clarabelle’s will, and I want you to really read these:
They must live together in the house for four months, starting no more than 24 hours after the reading of the will. Ankle monitors on both of them. If either crosses the property line, the executor is notified and they forfeit their claim. No cell phones, no electronic devices. Each can designate one person to bring supplies every two weeks via the mailbox. Any violations mean immediate disinheritance. Contest the will — you’re out. If both complete the terms, they each own 50%. If neither does, the property goes to Sacred Heart of Shore Haven.
I’m grossed out by this premise. A month, sure, I’ve seen the forced proximity trope done to death. But four months? That is a third of a year. No outside contact. No electronics. No one can come visit. They can’t leave. They are both people who run their own businesses. And what I kept coming back to: what if something happened? What if one of them got seriously hurt and needed a hospital? Stubborn people don’t always seek medical attention when they can — these two couldn’t even call for it. This doesn’t feel like a gift. It feels like Clara wanted to torture them and just made it look like a will.
But in they go.
Moving In
Jade brings her dog Precious — a boy — because the will didn’t say she couldn’t. Finding loopholes already, and I respect that. What I don’t respect is her dad, who before she moved in told her to flaunt her assets, make Damon fall for her, then dump him so he’d be too heartbroken to fight her for the property. I already don’t like this woman. And I already hate her father.
They hate each other. Fully, completely, childishly. Spiders in the closet courtesy of Damon. Rotten fish under the floorboards. Loud music. Clogging drains. Painting over windows. Banging pots and pans. Making each other’s food go bad. Just stupid, stupid childish stuff. The more I think about it, the more I think Clara did actually want to torture them. And what if they ran out of food?? The whole thing is just major isolation dressed up as a quirky inheritance plot.
The Thaw
She gets a poison ivy rash and it looks infected. He has calamine lotion. In order to use it, he makes her take her shirt off and say please. Another gross, shitty move. It becomes a sensual exchange, apparently, but it’s still gross.
Then the boiler quits. Damon suspects her of sabotaging it. Turns out it’s out of oil. No heat for two weeks. He has a full leak through his bedroom ceiling, then puts his foot through the floor. She, at the same time, is wrestling with a family of raccoons. What is going on here?? So now with no heat they have to snuggle. And even after the heat comes back on they still go to bed together.
Jade has a panic attack when she gets locked in the attic. When she calms down, she admits her brother Beckett used to lock her in the basement and wouldn’t let her out. First time was an accident. After that he enjoyed it. He would drag her down there and leave her in the dark for hours, sometimes all night. He told her if she ever told anyone he would dig a hole in the yard and bury her there.
Damon’s story: when he was nine, his father worked for Jade’s father’s company. There was an accident on site and his dad died. When they applied for workers’ comp and death benefits, the company denied it and said they weren’t responsible. They lawyered up; Jade’s dad threatened to drag it out for years. They lost their house and lived in a car for a while. Then his mom died six months after his dad and he was left an orphan.
Jade admits her mother committed suicide. She found her. She says she doesn’t remember what her mother looked like because her family got rid of all the photos; all she can remember is her feet when she found her dead.
Look — I hated the storyline, but the writing here is good. I just wish it was in service of a better premise.
The Fall
They sleep together. He decides to renovate the bathroom so she can have a bubble bath. At this point they are having a lot of sex — unprotected, because if they requested condoms through their supply runners, their friends would know what was happening. Which is honestly the most realistic and absurd detail in this entire book.
Speaking of the friends: Ian (Damon’s) and Piper (Jade’s) are doing their every-two-week supply drops and are also getting into each other. Ian eventually asks Piper out. When the friends come by for their drop-off, Damon and Jade basically shove them back out the door — which I genuinely don’t get. You’ve been stuck in this house, you have two more weeks until the next visit, why are you rushing them out the door? Even if you’re all excited about the sex, you’d think you would still want outside contact with fresh people.
Also, Damon asks Ian to bring Dirty Dancing for Jade. Jade asks Piper to bring Predator for Damon. And I want to note — the will said no electronics. A TV IS an electronic. Even if it was already in the house, I am not quite sure how watching VHS tapes is not a clear violation. But nobody asked me.
Feelings are fully developing. Jade brings up what they even are. He hedges — tells Ian the plan is progressing nicely. She overhears. She storms off.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Jade’s solution: they both walk across the property line at the same time. Together. I’m sorry — you have been in that house for what? Two and a half, maybe three months at this point. You are that close to being done. And you are going to forfeit the whole thing? I don’t care that she’s upset. Why are you giving up now, lady??
She crosses the line. She tells him he can leave with her. He says he can’t leave. She walks away.
When Ian comes for his next supply visit, Damon looks rough. He admits he wants things with Jade to be permanent. Ian finds out from Piper that Jade has gone back to work and that she’s been relegated to sitting in the corner of the meeting room. Her family literally put her in what her younger brother Bailey calls the “idiot chair.” Then her dad comes to her office and tells her that if she doesn’t stop acting like her mother, he’ll have her sent away somewhere, discreetly. She looks at him and tells him he can leave. She is done.
Damon finishes out his four months. Ankle monitor removed. He races to Jade’s office, fights his way in, sees her sitting in the corner and I’ll give the book this moment. It shows him, in one look, exactly what her life has been. He gives her a paper: a property transfer. He says he couldn’t leave with her that night because he couldn’t give her what he didn’t have, so he stayed and finished, because he planned to give it to her all along.
She asks if there’s a catch. He tells her he’s crazy in love with her, but it’s hers.
She changes the transfer form. 50/50. Then she stands up, looks her father in the face, and tells him she’s leaving and she won’t be back. She looks at her younger brother Bailey and tells him he should leave too. Piper comes running in and hands in her own resignation on the spot. Her dad owns her condo and will change the locks within the hour but she doesn’t care. They move into the house they both now own.
They marry. Two years later she’s four months pregnant. Bailey left the company one year after the wedding and works under Ian now. Beckett — the brother who locked Jade in the basement — was embezzling funds from the company. Went to jail, made bail, and split town.
The ending is clean. I’m glad for it. I just spent the whole book angry at a premise I never made my peace with, and no amount of sweet ending changes that.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — A proper romance with heat. Things shift during the calamine lotion scene and it doesn’t hold back from there. Unprotected sex throughout.
Would I Relisten to It?
No. The narrator was honestly one of the best parts — the narration is good, and that’s part of why this is two stars and not one. But I got angry every single time I sat down to listen, and I don’t need to feel like that twice. Two stars, and I’m being generous because I do like Emma Chase’s writing. Just not this one.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon CA | Amazon US
🎧 Audiobook
Audible CA | Audible US
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Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Genre: Contemporary Romance, Forced Proximity | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
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