*Big thanks to Harlequin Books and Netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange of an honest review. And sorry for the delay, I’m still trying to put everything in place on my social networks and on this blog after hurricane María because of my internet issues.*

This book is the first of the Rings of Vengeance trilogy, and it was a good start.

The book has good points in its favor. First, as part of a trilogy, some of the consequences of Benjamin’s plan were practically out of the book to be explained in the next two installments —yes, I read book two already— because they involved the twins. And it could work to see the Casillas’s point of view on the next books and keep the reader intrigued about Luis and Javier. What I didn’t like of it is that those consequences affected Freya too, and we didn’t see what happened between her and Javier, only a few glimpses of it. After all they were engaged, isn’t it? Unless we see them in book three, which I will start tonight…

I found Freya a very cold woman —the coldest I’ve ever seen in Harlequin Presents books, in fact—, not letting her emotions rule her. Her steel personality is a bit shocking for a heroine, used to be more sentimental than men. That said, that part of her is what makes the story work because, if she were more sweet and emotional, what can we have? The storyline would lost its strength and purpose, in my humble opinion. We have to consider that this woman was Javier’s fiancée. If she were a bundle of emotions, would he choose her as his trophy wife? I don’t think so..

I found him contradictory in some moments of the story. He has an iron will, but at the same time his attraction to Freya makes him weak sometimes. He believed in loyalty and there are moments in which emotions took the worse in him. He’s volatile without being an abuser, and he acts as a woman would do.

Even though this story has a clear switch between hero and heroine’s ways of development, at the end they emerged as their best. The chemistry between Freya and Benjamin is there, no doubt about it. You can really feel it. What I didn’t believed completely is their love. It was a bit dysfunctional, as Benjamin’s parents was..

Full review here: https://eluniversodeaisha.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/review-billionaires-bride-for-revenge-by-michelle-smart-rings-of-vengeance-1/

Benjamin stole Freya from Javier for revenge or so the story started out but quickly you learn this is so much more. They fell in love with one look from across a garden on the night of Freya's engagement party to Javier. Luis and Javier Casillas were brothers and they took advantage of Benjamin during a very low point in his life, his mother was dying. So Benjamin takes his revenge out on Freya, but they fell in love and the rest is silence. I loved this story, Benjamin is good looking, rich and more honorable then the Casillas, his best friends. I had already read the story of Luis & Chloe and I would have liked to read a little of Chloe and Benjamin and how he sort of forgave Luis. That's the reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5, it's like Chloe didn't exist for Benjamin. I still recommend this book highly.

Interesting read. The characters are a bit flat at first but in the last quarter of the book they come to life more. Much of the drama comes from lack of honesty with themselves and a severe lack of communication. Once everyone starts talking to each other the story flows better. I do wish the epilogue have a better idea how long it is after the last chapter. Overall I'd give the book 3.75 stars. It's a good read, writing skills are good; I just couldn't suspend disbelief enough to love the characters which I know is a personal thing.

Rating~ 2.5 stars
I quite like the authors books but this one just fell a bit off the mark for me. Since I'm writing this review after already the second book in the series, I can safely say it was just this book that I didn't enjoy because I really liked Marriage Made in Blackmail, Luis and Chloe (Hero's sister from this book).

I just didn't really feel the connection between the hero and heroine and the whole revenge plot (which was done well in the second book) didn't really incite the same response as it did here and I was just disappointed in the hero which made me not enjoy the couple.

Freya Clements has achieved the pinnacle of success as a ballerina. Chosen as Principal Dancer for the Compania de Ballet de Casillas in Madrid is a coup for her. That one of the owners is now her fiance, is yet another feather in her cap. The marriage is a contracted arrangement. She gets money and the freedom to pursue her craft as she pleases. He gets a trophy, someone to show off to the world, and the freedom to continue living his life as he pleases. When she meets Benjamin Guillem, she realizes how cold her arrangement with Javier is, but, for her mother's sake, she can't back out.

Benjamin's first sight of his former friend Javier's fiance, is confounding. Around Javier, she is cool and collected, but she flames to life in his presence. When he concocts a scheme to get revenge on Javier and his brother, who double-crossed him to the tune of millions, Freya is at the center of that scheme. He offers her the exact same deal Javier gave her in their written contract, If Javier chooses money over her. When that happens, he is stunned to read exactly what she had agreed to. One night a week in his bed? Not if he can help it. If he's going to get married, he wants a wife.

As Freya and Benjamin come together, both realize that a cold, calculated relationship is not in the cards for them. Can they find the middle ground where both of them get what they want?

When I devour an HP romance, I wonder, all over again, why I do? The plots are preposterous; the characters, ridiculously exaggerated; and the relentless theme of a moneyed, ruthless hero entrapping the heroine by a pitiless, self-serving scheme. Her innocence, yuck her virginity, turns his ruthlessness into helplessness and leads to the hero being a better man, the man lurking behind layers of survival and necessity over empathy. The hero is left bare, stripped of all his power in the face of his love for the heroine; he goes from tempered steel to marshmallow in a mere 150 pages. It never ceases to amaze me why I, and countless other women, enjoy them so darn much. Smart’s Billionaire’s Bride For Revenge is a perfect example. I think, I suspect, that the reason I and others enjoy them is that life’s petty, everyday, economic impediments are pushed aside by the hero’s wealth and we are left only, solely, with the emotional impediments that thwart hero and heroine from finding fulfillment and happiness in and with each other. The ways they manoeuve their way through these emotional barriers are sex, conversation, and internal, personal realization, acts of self-honesty.

The HP often begins with a revelatory new set of circumstances for the hero and especially the heroine, which is why the revenge plot works well at throwing the protagonists into acute, extraordinary circumstances. As the hero is the one with the power and wealth, he is the instigator and the heroine is drawn into his plot like a fish in a tight net. In Billionaire’s Bride‘s case, Benjamin Guillem lures prima ballerina Freya Clements into his revenge plot by claiming that her fiancé, Javier Casillas, one of his best friends, needs her.

The first indication of the hero’s power is how all things give way before him, like the basic necessity and increasingly fraught passage of crossing a border. Benjamin takes Freya from a party and to his private plane under the guise of delivering her to her supposedly needy fiancé: “As they drove into the remote airfield less than ten minutes later she suddenly straightened. ‘I haven’t got my passport on me.’ ‘You don’t need it.’ Benjamin’s own private plane was ready to board, his crew in place”. Of course, all impediments give way before his Moneyness and Powerfulness. Yet, we cannot sustain the dick-hero, the author must hint at his redemptive potential. Benjamin has qualms, a hint of guilt at the role he’s about to play: “He ignored another wave of guilt as she climbed the metal steps onto his jet, as trusting as a spring lamb.” If Freya is the lamb, then Benjamin, by definition, must yield the knife. But the genre will stay the hand that slays, as God does an Abraham wielding the knife over Isaac.

After political boundaries are erased, the heroine’s creature comforts are taken care of. The pesky business of political reality and necessity dismissed, the heroine will have her needs met, in this case, with a drink: “Benjamin summoned a member of his crew. ‘Get Mademoiselle Clements a drink, whatever she wants. I’ll have a glass of port.’ Soon their drinks had been served and Freya sipped at her gin and tonic.” I don’t know about you, dear reader, but is there anything better than a G&T well-served. I find Benjamin’s “port” a bit of a sissy drink, but that’s me. Maybe another indication of how he’s really a softie underneath. The heroine’s power is a subtler thing; it’s about the effect she has on the hero: “There was something about this woman he reacted to in a way he could not comprehend.” Nothing too helpless yet, but to the HP reader, this will hold her while his Dickness dominates, which it must, at least until his Marshmallow Grovel.

The heroine’s moral superiority is established well and early by giving her, for an HP, an amazingly happy childhood: “Freya had been raised by parents who were permanently on the breadline. They were the kindest, most loving parents a child could wish for and if she could live her life childhood again she wouldn’t swap them for anyone. Money was no substitute for love.” Ah, but dear reader, please note, Freya has EVERYTHING the hero doesn’t, except the hero has the thing that makes the economic reality of buying groceries go away. (Aside: the HP often makes me think of Marx’s second and less famous clause to “religion being the opiate of the people,” “the sigh of the oppressed creature.” The HP, therefore, is the ultimate fantasy where all economic needs are, like Maslow’s hierarchy, met first and quickly so that we can get to the good stuff.)

What form does Benjamin’s revenge take? Freya’s fiancé and his brother, says Benjamin, caught him at a weak moment (his mother dying of cancer, you have to have at least one per HP) and they had him invest money in their schemes. They, to date, repaid his loans, but have never given him what they owe him of return on his investment: ” ‘They owe me two hundred and twenty-five million euros.’ He had earmarked that money for a charity that helped traumatised children.” A few things are happening here: the hero’s power and determination are proven once more, but his means, revenge, is an uh-uh. Hence, he’s humanized and rendered sympathetic by the “charity” for the “traumatized children”.

What role will Freya play in his revenge? Javier will have to cough up the money, or Freya must marry Benjamin instead, thus publicly humiliating Javier. (The raised eyebrows at this premise, they were hairline soaring. But there you have it, this did not diminish my enjoyment.) Benjamin’s revenge objectifies Freya:“This was revenge in its purest form and she was his weapon of choice to gain it.” Ah, but the tables will turn: his soft underbelly, Benjamin’s twinges of guilt and charitable donations will be exploited until he gives up the centring of personal meaning in power and money and transfers his loyalty to the heroine and their children (a poppet always shows up by the end and Smart’s HP is no different). He doesn’t ever have to give up the money and power, but they can now serve the heroine and their family.

Initially, Benjamin, the hero, is a cold-hearted a-hole: “Her kidnapper stared at her without an ounce of pity, waiting for her response to his bombshell [the MOC]. She responded by using the only means she had at her disposal, her only weapon. Her body.” Ah, dear reader, now we arrive at the matter’s crux: sex, the great romance equalizer, for if the hero is helpless in the face of his desire, the heroine is no less. The sex is spectacular yes, more importantly, it is singular. It’s the best sex, actually for Freya, the only sex, but so good, the only one she’ll ever need, or want. While the heroine, Freya included, is a virgin in body and the HP is about her sexual awakening at and in the hero’s hands, the hero is an emotional virgin. (The conflict, impediments, dark moment, are manifestations of the couple’s growing pains as a unity.)

The hero, which is why hes the heroine’s and our vindication fantasy, must suffer at the heroine’s more adept emotional hands: “He shifted in his seat, unsettled but momentarily trapped in a gaze that seemed to have the ability to reach inside him and touch his soul … He blinked the unexpected and wholly ridiculous thought away and flashed his teeth at her.” Flash away, pretty boy, you’re about to be hoisted on your own heartless petard. The heroine is then put through torments by the hero: the heroine becomes the hero’s expiatory vehicle. There’s a terrific scene where Freya’s feet are injured when she tries to escape Benjamin. Sins are heaped on the heroine: “The marriage agreement she had willingly signed giving herself to two separate men proved that. Freya was a gold-digger in it purest form.” Benjamin defines Freya according to the only terms he understands, monetary ones.

One of the HP’s most vindication-rich heroine moments, at least in Smart’s smart telling, is when the heroine’s gaze is turned on the hero as an object. While she’s been an object of his revenge, rendered precious and singular in the act of loving-making, he becomes the object of her physical desire (remember, sexual awakening with the emotionally satisfying pleasures of exclusivity): “Her suddenly greedy eyes soaked in everything about him, from the way his long, muscular legs filled the black jeans he wore and the way his muscles bunched beneath his black T-shirt … she could see how untamed his thick black hair had become and the shadow on his jaw hinting at black stubble about to break free … ” I adored this description for the way the heroine has tamed the hero’s wildness. His prowess and power, for which his powerful, huge body, hair’s thickness, about-to-break-outness quality of hirsuteness (tongue-in-cheek ciphers of his mate-worthiness, as well as ability to protect and succour, in his physicality, wealth, and power) will be at the heroine’s and her children’s disposal.

Because Smart is a great HP practitioner, I loved how she makes Benjamin pout over his objectification by Freya: “His wife wanted him for two things. Money for her family and sex for herself. As a husband he was surplus to requirements … ” This is where the review part kicks in. I didn’t really love either of these two, but I was fascinated by how many ideas this HP elicited. That is due to what Smart can do with it: unravel the hero’s accretions of money and power (which, note, is never political, au contraire, always apolitical) as purposeless until he can put them to good purpose in building a life with the heroine. They diminish as determinants to his self-identity, so that the heroine can have everything: in this case, a career, a baby, a faithful, loving hunk in her bed, and a chateau in Province, among other things. And what does the hero get out of it: a purposeful life, a meaningful life: ” … thanking all the deities in the skies for giving him the second chance to be a better man with this woman who completed him.” He can be a better man, the decency leached out of him by “making it” in the capitalistic world can be rediscovered, repurposed, and reinvented.

If nothing else, I hope you read Smart’s Billionaire’s Bride For Revenge to tell me I’ve over-read things. There’s a whole discussion we can have about how Freya can’t dance once she and Benjamin have spectacular, singular sex. There’s a whole conversation possible over how the hero now has possession of her body as a cipher for how he possesses her heart … With Miss Austen, who didn’t appreciate my mountain out of a molehill, Billionaire’s Bride For Revenge merits “real comfort,” Emma.

Michelle Smart’s Billionaire’s Bride For Revenge is published by Harlequin Books. It was released on May 22nd and may be found at your preferred vendor. I received an e-ARC from Harlequin Books, via Netgalley.

Freya was prepared to marry Javier Casillas in exchange for funds for her mother's medical treatment when she meets her finance's friend Benjamin Guillem. Both Freya and Benjamin are instantly attracted to each other though they both resist for different reasons.

Then Benjamin kidnaps Freya as a part of his plan to seek revenge against her fiancé and his brother. While he provides a luxurious environment for Freya, love can hardly thrive under these circumstances or can it? Can Benjamin work past his hatred of the Casillas and forge a relationship with Freya? Can Freya find a way past the kidnapping and Benjamin's hatred of ballet which is Freya's passion?

This is a harlequin romance so even the improbable seems probable but this one's a bit of a stretch for me.

Billionaire's Bride for Revenge by Michelle Smart is book One in the Rings of Vengeance series. This is the story of Benjamin and Freya.
Benjamin feels betrayed and seeks to get his revenge by taking Javier's future wife to get back some of the money he feels was taken.
Freya is a beautiful ballerina who is marring Javier as a business agreement to help her family. Although she is attracted to Benjamin she is worried about what will happen to her family. When they strike a business deal between them they find it hard to fight the emotional side of the deal.

What is it with HP lately? I use to be a big fan but now I can barely stomach to read any. It is like they are trying to turn off all HP customers lately. This one was another DNF for me with totally unlikable characters and stupid plot!

**ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

If you're like me and a long time Harlequin reader (over 40 years) Billionaire's Bride for Revenge by Michele smart won't disappoint. Swindled out of a large sum of money, Benjamin kidnaps Freya in an act of revenge against her fiance Javier. Sparks fly between the two along with plenty of angst. A solid 3 stars in my book.

This is Benjamin and Freya’s story. He wants revenge against the Castillas because they cheated him out of money. Freya is Luis’ fiancé. He will steal her away. She is a star ballerina. She was marrying Luis for money to take care of her mother’s illness. She will marry him instead. They hide there emotions. Finally they admit their feelings for each other. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.

This book had a fair amount of unnecessary drama. I would have liked to see more of the characters connecting with each other. So much of the book was focus on Benjamin's machinations and not enough on their relationship.

Rating 2.5

Revenge is the main theme of this story, to the exclusion of romance IMHO.

Benjamin was swindled from a large sum of money from two brothers he considered family. One of those brothers, Javier was engaged to Freya, a gifted ballerina . They meet at Javier's engagement party and are instantly attracted.

Two months later at another party we have Freya waiting for Javier and he's running late. Enter Benjamin saying he's was instructed by Javier to take Freya to him.

Benjamin has kidnapped Freya as revenge. He's asking for the money that's owed him. But what ends up happening is Javier isn't interested (he believes that the two are lovers as pictures were taken of the two leaving the party hand in hand and looking very cozy together).

Freya's engagement to Javier was more a business deal. He has a beautiful and talented ballerina for a wife and she in exchange is given a large sum of money that can help her poor parents and sick mother.

When Javier rejects Benjamin's offer Freya is distraught. What evolves is the two marry and will use the agreement/prenup that she had with Javier.

The two cannot fight their physical attraction. Their marriage begins based on sex but evolves into more as they begin to learn more about each other. What they find is that there is so much more to what each show the rest of the world.

What dominated this story was the animosity and revenge. I didn't find much to like in either character. Both came across angry and spiteful, with very little softness or heart that was displayed through the story. I never connected with the heroine as she came across cold and almost shrewish. The hero was okay and at times I liked him, somewhat. But towards the end he did something that just turned off him completely.

The epilogue was sweet though.

I just didn't connect to either character and found them not very likable.

I received an ARC from NG for review.

Benjamin is a man seeking revenge and Flora is his target. At times I hated this story because she was caught between two men. Yeah I know its about revenge but I didn't realise Flora would be kidnapped in the worst way possible and she was essentially a prisoner. I really had a very tough time with this plot