The concept seems straightforward and I did guess the ending before the big reveal. The book was engaging and kept me reading so I give it 4 stars. The characters were entertaining and the plot intriguing.

**Thank you to Net galley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review***
First, let me say I was really excited to be approved for an ARC of this book. The description of the plot appealed to me because I had never read any books involving the sugar Daddy/Baby arrangement and I thought it sounded interesting. I was not disappointed.
Natalie is an art student struggling to make ends meet in expensive New York City. Even with her part time job as a waitress at a bar, she can't pay all of her bills. A friend from school confides in Natalie about how she can afford her nice apartment, clothes and fancy vacations. She tells Natalie about being paid to meet older men who are looking for companionship, and possibly more. This sounds like easy money to Natalie. Although nervous, Natalie's first time meeting Gabe, a man 30 years her senior, goes surprisingly well, despite her drinking too much. Natalie continues meeting up with Gabe, and soon enters into an "arrangement", with him. For Gabe, this is a financial contract. To Natalie, Gabe becomes so much more. She begins to truly fall for him,
When Gabe tries to end the arrangement, Natalie begs him to reconsider. She continues to harass him, and things take a turn for the worse when someone ends up dead.

The Arrangement had a decent plot line, and characters. What made me want to keep reading was that I felt bad for Natalie, and was rooting for her to overcome her problems. I did feel though, that the big problem in the story is not introduced until very late in the book, which then caused the ending had to be rushed. I would have preferred for it to be introduced much sooner, and more time could have been spent on solving the problem. Overall, this was a solid thriller, and I would recommend it to those wanting to read something different.

“Welcome to the sugar bowl.”

While this might sound like a sweet-tooth’s dream, it’s actually something quite different. In Robyn Harding’s newest domestic thriller, The Arrangement, readers meet Natalie and Gabe, a couple involved in a sugar-baby/sugar-daddy relationship.


I knew I wanted to read The Arrangement as soon as I saw it because I’m a big fan of Robyn Harding’s writing. Last year she released Her Pretty Face, which I devoured in two sittings. When I found out the synopsis for her newest book, I was even more excited.

I remember reading an article a few years ago about university students using websites to find sugar daddies in order to help make ends meet. I knew this was something that people did, but was surprised to learn that the University of Waterloo (one of two universities in the city where I live) had one of the highest volumes of users in all of Canada. But on second thought, it wasn’t really that surprising. Being a student is hard: you have the stress of school, working to pay tuition, rent, and feeding yourself, and sometimes, you just need to do whatever you can to survive. Who am I to judge someone for making that decision?

The premise of this book pulled me in, and once I started reading, I was completely hooked. The first chapter is set in a police station, where someone admits to murder. Then, you’re taken back in time, and are introduced to the main character.

Natalie is a twenty-something in art school, and after losing her job and being kicked out of her apartment, she needs to make money, fast. One of her friends introduces her to the world of sugar relationships, and before she knows it, she’s head-over-heels in love with her sugar daddy, Gabe.

Of course, Gabe isn’t everything he says he is. Sure, he’s a successful lawyer who is incredibly charming and handsome, but nothing is ever as good as it seems. He has his own secrets, and as things begin to unravel, Natalie finds herself wrapped up in everything, fighting for what she believes she deserves.

The plot of this book was fast-paced and full of drama. It’s also set in New York City and at times felt like watching an episode of Gossip Girl. You have high-society characters interacting with young adults, emotions are running high, and people are desperate. It was like watching reality television, but better, because it was a book written by one of my favourite authors.

Of course, there are twists and turns, plenty of red herrings, and an ending that will leave you reeling. Plus, the overall theme of the book—sugar relationships—will undoubtedly provoke some thinking, and likely make for a good discussion if you read The Arrangement for a book club.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and have been recommending it to friends since I finished it. I’ve never been let down by one of Robyn Harding’s books, and can’t wait to see what she does next.

The Arrangement will be available on July 30, 2019, and can be bought wherever books are sold. Thank you to the publisher for an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley.

I really enjoyed this book! It was interesting to learn more about the sugar baby/sugar daddy world. I found myself empathizing with Nat, the main character, because of how her naivete regarding the sugar baby world allowed her to quickly get in over her head. The reveal of what really happened surprised me. I look forward to reading more books by this author!

This is a fast paced riveting domestic thriller. You start the book knowing the main character has been charged with murder, but who she is believe to have killed and why remain a mystery until near the end of the book. These are the kind of books I like to say 'do not make you smarter, but are good entertainment'...and sometimes that is all you want,

A good beach read - fun and sexy with a twist.

What do you do when your back is up against a wall, and you stand to lose the dream you have worked so hard for? Where is the line in your morality? And what do you do when you keep pushing the line further and further? When you look around and realize that you have more than you thought you would, but feel empty, alone, and shamed? How far will you go to justify your actions? To make peace with yourself?
And what do you do when it all falls apart, and the police are knocking at your door?

Read the Arragement.

I absolutely loved this book! Kept me guessing right till the end! Highly recommend this book! You won’t be able to put it down

Well, I learned a new word - pansexual. I also learned a Sugar Bowl is the site where Sugar Babies find Sugar Daddies. I had heard of college girls paying for their educations by being escorts for wealthy older men. That services expected are so varied shouldn't have been a surprise but it was.

Natalie Murphy is the product of a broken home. Her artistic nature doesn't fit in with the practicality of small town life. Attending Art School in NYC is exciting and expensive; more expensive than Nat can afford.

Feeling pressured by financial needs Nat accepts a paid date with an older man - just to catch up her bills. Falling in love with Gabe makes sex acceptable to her, until he ends the arrangement.

What Nat does next is obsessive but not surprising considering how young and emotionally naive she really is.

I loved the plot twists and the ending is perfect. I read the book in a one day read-a-thon. it was so good!

I volunteered to read an ARC from Scout Press (Siimon & Schuster) through Net Galley.

3.5 stars rounded up!

The Arrangement turned out to be a more addicting read than I first thought it would be! It read like a guilty pleasure and I finished it in two days.

It delves into the intricacies of “sugar relationships”- there really aren’t a lot of books out there that cover this topic. This book is a mystery/thriller but I like how it’s unlike the usual thrillers out there .... not a whodunnit with a female lead but a book that’s leading up to a satisfying twist at the end.

This book had me completely hooked from the very first chapter!

Nat is a 21-year-old struggling art student. She learns about the Sugar Daddy Sugar Baby lifestyle from a close friend and decides to pursue it. She meets, Gabe; perfect, handsome, wealthy Gabe. She had everything, enough money to cover her rent, new shoes & clothes, fancy dinners and luxurious evenings. How had she gotten so lucky? She was in love and she was sure Gabe was too. But why wouldn’t he leave his family for her? Everything changed once a body was found outside Gabe’s Upper East Side apartment.

I absolutely devoured this book. Harding has created such a loveable and relatable character in Nat; the attention to detail makes each character and situation palpably real. I always find it fascinating to read about tangible life events and Robyn does a superb job of developing and substantiating the world of sugar daddies and sugar babies. I have learned so much about the world of sugar babies from this book and it has definitely changed my tune. This book had so many well-developed supporting characters that it kept me guessing as to who and what was going to happen.

This is a great summer read of anyone looking for a book to keep them glued to the pages. One of my 2019 favourites.

The Arrangement dives into the complicated nature of Sugar Relationships. I was shocked and intrigued by this book and the layers of these intricate relationships and life that’s natalie gets sucked into. The characters were well developed and the plot flowed nicely to keep me hooked!
Highly recommended.

*Thank You NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader’s copy of this book is exchange for my honest review.

The Arrangement was a guilty pleasure read, a car wreck of a story that I couldn’t turn away from.

A sugar baby/ sugar daddy story that reads like a bad Lifetime movie. I both loved and hated the main characters-
Gabe- a vile and cold multimillionaire in need of adoration and control and Nat- a naive and slightly unhinged student too broke to pay her bills.

Starts on “innocent” enough but ends in murder and intrigue.

The ending felt a little bit rushed, but it’s a salacious beach read.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster and Ms. Robyn Harding for the opportunity to read this Advanced Readers Copy of "The Arrangement".

Coming soon, July 30 2019
4 stars
Mystery/Thriller/Suspense

What an exciting delicious read!
"Nat" is a twenty something art student barely getting by. She works at a local bar for mostly tips, and this job isn't working out. Her roommates hate her and want to evict. Her mom is happily remarried with a new perfect family, and her dad is estranged living somewhere in Las Vegas.
And her ex boyfriend is a nasty piece of work.
She's alone.
She's drowning.
She needs a life preserver.
She wants a Sugar Daddy.

So Nat begins to really enjoy being a sugar baby. Her "Sugar Daddy" is perfect. He takes her to posh restaurants, fills her wallet and her wardrobe. He's always thinking about her, tells her she's beautiful, and totally enjoys her company. What could possibly go wrong with such a sweet Arrangement?

Be careful of what you think you want...

Everything shiny isn't always golden...

Everything has a price that must be paid...

And sometimes we can't afford it.

I'm going to start by saying this was my favourite of Robyn Harding's books to date. I think her writing is getting better and better every time, and that is great to see. The pacing was once again excellent, and I think that's something she does very well in her books, I never found myself bored or unenthused to pick it up.

And I'm torn, right now my rating is sitting at a three because I did like it, I found the story to be pretty enjoyable, and there were moments where I did not want to put it down. Gabe, our Sugar Daddy, was as smarmy as he was meant to be. He was not a likeable character, as he shouldn't have been. The rest of the male cast was pretty spot on to a lot of what we see in the dating pool. I think there were a lot of great moments. But I think what's keeping me from rating it any higher is that it was much more challenging to relate to Nat, our main character. There was so much more I wanted from her.

I'm still in my twenties, money being tight is a problem a lot of us deal with, I'm not that far out from a major city with exorbitant prices that play into that problem. And for some reason, while I should have been able to connect to this character, I didn't.

She was incredibly isolated from the get-go. Roommates disliked her, far from her family, hardly any friends... and while I understand that as a situation is entirely plausible, in this book it only left me wanting. And I think what I really wanted more of was a deeper relationship to someone that wasn't a 'threat' or so surface level. There was a chance at that with Ava before it fizzled out into nothing beyond the method of getting her into the sugar bowl. And even with her school friends before they simply weren't mentioned again.

So to sum up, great book, I want more!

Read an ARC which was provided to me by NetGalley for an honest review.

The Arrangement is a mystery/thriller. However it is also quite sexy. So to me it is also romantic suspense. It is my first book by this author.

The main narrator is 21 year old Nat (3rd person POV). She is an arts student who has moved to NYC. She is struggling financially when one of her classmates offers her a solution to her problem. There is an internet dating site where sugar babies are matched with sugar daddies.

I liked the premise of this book. Although the beginning was just okay for me. Natalie was not overly likable. However the book starts with a prologue and then the next chapter goes back four months. So I was interested to find out what had actually happened in the prologue.

At around the two thirds point the book got a lot more interesting. Nat befriends someone. And there were actually a lot of very intriguing developments. It's only in the last part that it becomes clear what the mystery is in this story. The last part of the book was definitely the strongest. However, I found the big reveal to be quite obvious.

Overall this was a fairly quick read. The premise was different and I did enjoy the story. I just wish that the whole story had sucked me in as much as the last part did.

Like many books I have been reading lately, I went into "The Arrangement" completely blind. GUYS, as soon as I discovered what this book was about I was literally hooked. You don't read many, if any books about this topic and I am all for it. I just recently stumbled upon a YouTube video about a "Sugar Baby" and I didn't even realize that it was a thing and then I started reading a book about it too, fun! I would for sure watch a movie about this book, honestly, it had me hooked. The characters were outrageous, Gabe is your typical rich guy looking for a side piece and Natalie is a desperate, young woman using her body for money. I hated them both but obviously my hatred for them just made me love everything about this book that much more. Betrayal, lies, drama, and MURDER, what more can you ask for?


A massive Thank You to @simonschusterca for accepting my request on @netgalley to read and review "The Arrangement" by Robyn Harding, PUBLICATION DATE: July, 30th 2019

The Arrangement was exactly what I needed – a quick read with an intriguing premise and a satisfying twist at the end.

Natalie is a 21-year-old art student in New York City, who is struggling to pay for her rent and tuition even with her part-time job. When her friend suggests she consider becoming a sugar baby, she is immediately repulsed by the idea. But when a series of events leave her even more desperate for cash, she decides that a couple of no-strings-attached dates with wealthy older men might be the solution to her problems. One date with Gabe, an attractive and powerful attorney, turns to two, and eventually to an arrangement – and maybe even more. Until the relationship spirals out of control…

I loved the glimpse into the taboo sugar daddy/baby world, and it was obvious that Harding did her research prior to writing this book. I could have read more just about Nat’s initial experiences and dates, but I understand why Gabe was introduced so quickly. Both Nat and Gabe are unlikeable characters – Nat because she is immature and only thinks of herself, and Gabe because of he is downright vile – but their unlikability is almost necessary to the story. This book is light and entertaining, and while I found Nat and Gabe’s relationship and chemistry a bit rushed, the rest of the story was satisfying and compulsively readable. Harding is a master of writing books that are impossible to put down and I will definitely pick up anything she writes in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an eARC of The Arrangement in exchange for an honest review.

A couple of years ago I watched a pretty interesting documentary on sugar babies, which focused on a friend of a friend who actively participated for a summer to film the documentary, so I was very curious to see where this book would take me and what additional insights, and fictionalized events, would stem from Harding's interest and imagination. It was a unique - and tempting - basis for a story that I found very alluring.

There was a glaring issue I couldn't get past in this book, though. Natalie was driven by financial stress and she sees her only choices as taking out a loan or becoming a sugar baby. As if taking out a loan is the absolute worst thing in the world. I get it, I don't like debt, no one wants to take on debt, but with all the initial reservations Natalie has about being a sugar baby, she hardly even considered the route of a loan. It felt like a flimsy foundational excuse just to write this particular story, and that was a bit of a letdown for me.

That wasn't the only decision of Nat's I didn't agree with, none of which actually has to do with her becoming a sugar baby. To each their own. She just said so many things and then acted the complete opposite, almost, again, just to create directions for the story to move in, which didn't at all feel authentic or natural for me. Her emotions were also constantly conflicting, which should seem par for the course given the circumstances, but instead it just seemed messy and inconsistently all over the place. One minutes she's ashamed, next minute she's empowered, next minute she's in love, next minute she knows it's a business transaction. Girl, get it together.

I'm also not sure whether I was supposed to like these characters? I assume I was at least supposed to like Natalie, to root for her and want to see her thrive, but I didn't. They weren't great people and she and Gabe lacked chemistry, even though the book told us again and again how attractive she found him, despite his age. I just couldn't get behind anything Natalie did or said and I didn't even dislike her in a good way either.

Despite her claims otherwise, Natalie kept trying to find Mr. Right and romance in the situations she was putting herself in, situations that by their entire existence are set up to prevent this from happening. And that's fine, that creates the conflict in the story, but Nat's desperation wasn't to make her rent or to survive, it was to be with this unobtainable man who is not interested in her in that way and it just didn't come off as I thought it should have. Or could have. It came off as a joke, not something I found any interest in following along with. She kept claiming love, which seemed totally out of the blue to me, no other evidence of that having happened and I wasn't convinced in the least. Again, more of the book telling me this was the case as opposed to it actually seeming to happen naturally.

I thought this could be really clever and interesting and dark, but it ended up being more of a Pretty Woman wannabe, a love story wearing someone else's fancy clothes, with a transparent thriller twist thrown in to stay on trend.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve read 2 of Robyn Hardings’ books before and loved them. So I was excited to see this up on Netgalley. It sounded good and I’ve always been curious about the dynamics of the “sugar” relationships.

I will say I did not like Nat or Gabe. And I always think it says something about an authors skill when I dislike the characters. I did feel a bit sorry for Nat though, it’s hard being a struggling student.

I suspected the conclusion, but there was still a little twist there.

Overall, highly recommend. Makes for a great summer read. I could not put this book down.

Thank you to NetGalley, Robyn Harding and Simon & Schuster Canada for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Natalie is a young art student in New York, struggling to make ends meet when her friend makes a suggestion; why not go online and find a sugar daddy to help with your bills? Nat learns lots of girls do it and all that is required is to look pretty and listen intently. More than thirty years her senior is Gabe, a handsome candidate and within a month they are madly in love – at least Nat thought so. Gabe has a family and has no intention of giving that up. So when Gabe ends things, Nat doesn’t take it well. She becomes an alcoholic and begins stalking him and trying to worm her way into his life. But Gabe isn’t about to let a sugar baby ruin his perfect life, and then suddenly a body is found by Gabe’s apartment.

This one had me interested right away because it’s nothing something you read about in novels very often. I really liked Nat and how she just wanted to be able to live comfortable in her shared apartment and pay her tuition on time. This book is pretty fast paced and I enjoyed how it was told from both Natalie’s and Gabe’s point of view so you can see what both of them are thinking about this relationship right from the beginning. I loved seeing how infatuated Nat got with Gabe and how twisted people can be out in the world. I definitely enjoyed the second half the most because things go a bit wild and I couldn’t help but binge read it right up to the last page. I adored the ending and I would definitely recommend this one!

Out July 30th!