ARC Review: Paid For by Alexa Riley

I have read several of these short Alexa Riley books. The one thing I can tell you is that you get what the author promises. The books are quick, dirty and full of bossy alpha men. The books, including this one, also tend to follow popular romance tropes. This book is from the timeless Cinderella tradition.

Kennedy plays the role of the heroine who has run into desperate financial times. She has a sick relative who she is trying to take care of and she is just about out of cash. Mason is a difficult rich CEO who can't find a good administrative assistant. Mason's business partner decides to help Mason find an assistant but also to help him get laid. I'm all for inappropriate office romance but I was sort of confused by what happens next. Kennedy applies to be an administrative assistant but Mason thinks she is paid to do...other stuff too. Mason makes it clear that's what he thinks and Kennedy goes with it.  Kennedy immediately moves into Mason's house and becomes his full-time toy, for lack of a better term.

I understood why Mason was confused about Kennedy's role but I did not understand Kennedy just agreeing to be a prostitute when she signed up to be a secretary. Also, and some other people may not have even noticed this, Mason still needed an assistant. While he was playing around with Kennedy who was keeping his schedule and typing stuff? This may seem like a minor issue but the cast the entire storyline in a really ridiculous light. I think I could have gotten over all of the things about this book that don't don't really make sense, which by the way, is everything. These books are good for me because sometimes I'm not in the mood for all the extra story stuff. I just want the quick dirty bossy alpha man and hot sex. But what I couldn't get past in this book was the sort of creepy undertone. Kennedy and Mason have some weird daddy daughter vibe going on. At a certain point, I felt like I was reading one of those taboo stories on the literotica website. I found the epilogue to be particularly disturbing given the fact that Kennedy is like 20 years old in this book and only five years elapsed between the beginning and the epilogue. If you read what happens in that 5 years it's just really flipping weird.

By the time I finished this book, I was more skeeved out than anything. I think maybe the promised over-the-top nature of the writing did too much to live up to its description. This just wasn't the short story for me.

**ARC provided by Ardent PRose**

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