King of Wrath

The review

Dante Russo is a ruthless, controlling billionaire CEO. Vivian Lau is a jewelry heiress whose family is about to become his business enemy. A blackmail threat forces Dante into an arranged engagement, and Vivian says yes out of duty to her parents, not affection for a man she finds rude and impossible to read. Both of them want the marriage to stay transactional. Neither of them manages it. It is the opener of Ana Huang's Kings of Sin series, one deadly sin per hero.

Arranged marriage is a trope that lives or dies on the slow thaw, and Huang gives it room. Dante is all walls and temper, Vivian is poised, polite and very good at hiding what she wants, and their early scenes are a cold war fought in dinner parties and pointed silences. When the cracks show, they show in small gestures, which is exactly how the trope should work.

Vivian is one of Huang's strongest heroines. Her conflict with her own family, and with the expectations placed on her as the dutiful daughter of new money trying to buy old-money respect, gives the book an emotional layer beyond the romance. Dante's protectiveness, when it finally appears, is aimed at the people hurting her.

The heat: four peppers. Amazon calls it a steamy arranged marriage billionaire romance with explicit content and profanity, for mature readers only. It is a slower build than Twisted Hate, but the payoff is frequent and explicit once the marriage stops being for show.

Know before you start: it is a standalone with a happy ending, and the Kings of Sin books each follow a different hero, so you can read them in any order, although they do reference each other. If you liked Twisted Love but wanted older, richer and married, start here. Fans of a grumpy hero with a soft spot only for his wife will find a lot to love.