A review by that1creativelady
The Secret Arrangement by Vanessa Waltz

1.0

This was SUPPOSED to be a retelling of the classic fairy tale Beauty & the Beast, but the "prince" turned out to be a manipulative, lying sack of shit.

Spoiler

I found so many issues with the story I could not stop rolling my eyes during the sex scenes. Like how do you plan to move your fiance to a Spanish-speaking country KNOWING she knows not one bit of Spanish? He could have at least bought her some Rosetta Stone in preparation. And I like an alpha male as much as the next romance reader, but come on. His controlling tendencies, kidnapping habit, and anger issues far surpassed alpha status and into scary domination. Plus, I get that their relationship bloomed pretty quickly, but then the brother is suddenly in love with her after a few weeks of being her guard??? Seriously? No deep conversations or nothing, huh? She was an idiot. I dont care how desperate you are, who moves to an unknown location with a stranger she met online, then tries to run away multiple times? In my opinion, she should just serve out her sentence as punishment for being a dumbass.

After reading all 3 books in the series I found a pattern in the women. They are all from crappy backgrounds. One is a foster child with abusive foster parents and a rapey foster brother, one has a brother and father who treats her like she has the plague, and this one is just homeless. No real insight into her background other than her father is racist trailer trash.
This is lazy writing. Using a crappy childhood to gain sympathy for your characters is fine, as long as the characters are likeable. Which none of them were. Plenty of insta-love though. *barf*