Marry Lies

Ravaged Castle

By: Amanda Richardson

Narrated by: Michael Gallagher, Fiona Hardingham

Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

He never wanted a wife, but for her, he’d spin a web of lies.

Miles: The idea of seeking a wife to salvage our family’s reputation starts as a joke…until it spirals into a desperate reality. Before I know it, I’m lying my way into a marriage of convenience with a woman who is everything I’m not.

Estelle Deveraux radiates warmth where I’m shrouded in darkness, exudes vibrant colors while I dwell in shades of gray, and irritates me with her maddening cheerfulness.

I find myself entranced, watching…craving.

Before I know it, she's not just my wife, but an all-consuming obsession—one I didn’t anticipate.

And one I can’t let go.

Stella: Being presented with an opportunity to kickstart my clothing line is a dream come true.
The only caveat? I have to stay married to Miles Ravage for a year and sing his praises to anyone who will listen.

Bad-tempered, unsmiling, and cold, Miles is exactly the kind of man I loathe.

However, beneath the ice, I uncover an enticing complexity–a veiled darkness that lures me in, begging me to discover his secrets.

One watchful secret in particular…with me as his sole obsession.

Marry Lies is a marriage of convenience, opposites attract/frenemies-to-lovers romance with a voyeur hero and Beauty and the Beast themes. It is book two in the Ravaged Castle series. All books can be listened to as standalones.

Warning: This book contains a grumpy hero who hates everyone but her. It also contains explicit sexual situations and strong language. There is no cheating, and there is a HEA.

©2023 Amanda Richardson (P)2024 Amanda Richardson

He’s Not Too Beastly

With his family’s reputation in shambles, Miles Ravage needs to save face by finding a wife. Estelle Deveraux needs money to launch her clothing line and agrees to marry the bad-tempered Miles for one year in exchange for what she wants. Miles soon finds that this exchange make work more in his favor than originally planned

Marry Lies is the second book in the Ravaged Castle series. I have not read the first book in the series but this one reads perfectly well as a stand-alone. The book has vague Beauty and the Beast undertones but the MMC is just an irritable human. There is explicit content throughout.

The MCs start out seeming like opposites but the further into the story, you realize how deeply flawed and vulnerable they both are. They find a certain balance in each other. While the spicy scenes are plentiful, I think the bond that grows between them goes beyond the physical.

I was not previously familiar with either of the narrators but I think they did an excellent job. Sometimes with explicit content, narrators will over act to the point of awkwardness, but that is not the case here. Both Fiona Hardingham and Michael Gallagher did well differentiating between all the characters. The accents along with the French pronunciations were done well.

This is the first book that I have read from author Amanda Richardson but I plan to look into more of her backlist.

I voluntarily listened to and reviewed an advanced copy of this audiobook. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Love This Family

5.0/5 ⭐
3.5/5 🌶️
4.0/5 🎧

I'm officially obsessed with this series and the Ravage family. These brothers are absolute fire. The spice, the way they treat their women, just everything about them is so dang good. Miles and Stella and their marriage of convenience were perfect, I loved watching them fall head over heels for each other.

Miles path to voyeurism was really interesting. I'm sure it was always something he would have gotten into, but his scars really pushed him towards the lifestyle as a way to hide them from the public. Stella was such a great match for him, not only does she love to watch, but she loves to be watched too. She really brings him out of his shell and finds the beauty in him, inside and out.

The audio was great, I absolutely loved Michael Gallagher and Fiona Hardingham did a fantastic job narrating Stella. While I wasn't a huge fan of her voice for Miles, her English accent was an absolute delight to listen to.

Marry Lies

While Amanda Richardson has been on my tbr for awhile, this is the first book that I’ve read by her, and call me intrigued because I definitely want to read more. These two characters could not more different if they tried, but they really do fit together so well.

Miles may have been a grumpy, stubborn ass that I wanted to smack on multiple occasions, but you could tell that Estelle was under his skin from the beginning by the little things that he would do for her and because of that I couldn’t help but love him. Estelle is such a sweet and giving person who is also fiercely independent and I love that about her. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have her struggles, because she does, but those struggles just make her stronger.

This audiobook is dual narration, and while that duet may be my favorite and what I prefer, I still enjoy a dual narration when the narrators do a good job, and luckily that’s what we get with this one. Michael Gallagher did such an amazing job showcasing Miles’s insecurities, stubbornness, and his struggles in coming to accept his feelings for Estelle. And Fiona Hardingham was perfect as Estelle and was really able to show her struggles and the strength that she has developed because of them.

All in all I really enjoyed the book itself as well the narration of the audiobook. The narrators did such a great job bringing these characters and the story to life that I was invested from beginning to end. Now, I need to go look at Richardson’s back list and figure out which of her books I’m going to read next.