I Almost Do

Trust & Tequila, Book 1

De: Evangeline Williams

Narrado por: Aiden Snow, CJ Bloom

James

They say I married Clarissa Harcourt for her father's company. They're wrong.

When your mentor makes a dying wish that you'll marry his daughter... you do it. Especially when you're halfway in love with her already.

Unfortunately, this marriage of convenience is anything but convenient. Clarissa doesn't know about the tattoos I hide under bespoke suits or my more than skin-deep scars. She's too vulnerable—and I'm too broken—for us to be more than married without benefits. When I told her I wouldn't touch her with these dirty hands, I meant it.

Now I'm stuck between the rock on her finger and a very hard place behind my zipper.

Clarissa

Note to self: when your crush won't consummate your wedding night, don't drown your sorrows in tequila and serenade him with Elvis songs. And please lock the door so he doesn't come in to hold your hair for you later.

Everyone says James is ruthless, but I know the side of him that is gentle and kind. The side that will give me anything my heart desires. Except for the one thing my heart desires.

I married my father's CFO hoping our "arrangement" would turn into something real. But as long as he controls my trust fund, he thinks he'd be taking advantage of me. He's wrong.

I want to be his partner, not his responsibility. And that starts with tempting him into a lot more than kissing his bride.

This slow-burn marriage of convenience is the first in a series of sexy standalones with no cheating and a very satisfying happily ever after. Intended for mature listeners.

©2023 Evangeline Williams (P)2024 Podium Audio

Good, Angtsy and Raw

Overall this book is good but I definitely have some mixed feelings.

I’ll start with the narration, The author picked perfect narrators for the story… Aiden Snow!!! Always, always top tier 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 He could probably make a tax form sound captivating (not that he needed to here), and he embodied James perfectly. And CJ Bloom? She absolutely held her own, so good and never once faded into the background.

Both MCs go through a lot, but the MMC’s story is where the book really shines. The author wrote mental health really well here…What he went through was genuinely tragic, and you can see how deeply it affected him mentally. I appreciated that the story didn’t just use his trauma for angst even though his trauma played a big part of how he went about his life… I appreciated that he actually showed his willingness to work through it, even though the reason was to be with the FMC (healing is healing, right?)

The story felt raw, messy ,in real work kind of way so it could be something that happened to some rich people… The MMC’s name change (and why he chose those names) ended up being really sweet, even though it came from such a heartbreaking place. That part honestly stuck with me.

The FMC was a nice surprise too. I appreciated that she wasn’t written as immature, selfish, no sense of self preservation or making dumb decisions just to push the plot 🙄 She felt grounded and intentional, which made her easy to like. She was smart enough to understand where her father was coming from and was a bit too evident of a daughter which I’ll take that over a lot of the FMCs I’ve read lately. The bar is low, be decent… oh! And she actually had friends, made friends and they appeared more than just before she met the MMC then disappeared or mentioned when something bad happened…

My biggest issue is still the age of the characters. I just didn’t care for how young FMC was… why couldn’t they be close in age? If someone is over protected they would have acted just like the FMC in this book, I don’t know…Feels mismatched…
This is one of those stories that probably would’ve hit even harder if the characters were a bit older, especially the FMC.

The book definitely leans more angsty than I usually prefer. And maybe this is just me reading too much dark romance, but the spice level was basically nonexistent like a 0.25/5 😅 It’s not even that I need spice, but with all that emotional buildup, I expected more intimacy or payoff, and it just… wasn’t there.

The pacing toward the end is where it lost me a bit. It felt like everything was building emotionally, and then it just wrapped up way too fast. The epilogue (which I did like) was also super short, and I wish we had gotten more time with the ending.

Overall, I did enjoy the story despite those frustrations. It had some really strong emotional moments and characters that actually felt worth rooting for because usually the FMC has angered me somewhere in the book with her stupidity.

I’m still on the fence about book 2 though I’ve heard it follows a similar theme, so I’m a little hesitant, I enjoy my books with a side of spice, but I might still give it a try.

The emotional trauma of the MMC! It’s not the FMC! Yes!

James is an onion! He needs his layers stripped away. It takes her several years to show him how she needs to be loved, but like any man - he doesn’t hear her until she leaves. I would have loved more spice but it didn’t fit in with the plot and it was still a great book!

slow burn, and so good

this is such a slow burn but so good. an emotional and sweet story. a lot of character growth and development throughout. not a lot of spicy scenes, but just what I was looking for at this time. a new author to me and I'll be reading more from them. narrators are two of my favorites and I really enjoyed this one.

Aiden and CJ are the best team

loved the narrators. love them separately but having them together really made the story that much better.

Not Bad

Storyline was interesting; however, the story was a bit slow-going. Love Aiden’s voice; both narrators did a great job! 👏🏾