whitneydaniell

by: Nikki Payne
Published: Nov 15, 2022
Genre: Romance, Contemporary, Fiction
401 Pages, Paperback
GoodReads Link

This was a s-l-o-w burn for me. I found that the more I read, the more I was interested in the story but for 75% of the book, I was quite over Liza and Dorsey.

This love story, in the foreground of Washington DC, didn’t curl all the way over for me. Liza and her sisters are known for their beauty throughout the city: The Bennett Sisters with her oldest sister being a former beauty queen. Through their own trials and tribulations, all three Bennett sisters live in a two-bedroom apartment with their mother and grandmother.

Liza is fighting the good fight against gentrification in their neighborhood when she meets, uber-billionaire Dorsey Fitzgerald. This is truly a ‘Pretty Woman’ story – that reference is used a few times in the book.

Here’s where the story lost me:

• Beverly Bennett is an awful mother who has cast her own insecurities and fears onto her daughters and, is jealous of them. She wants nothing more than for them to marry rich. The whole scene at the awards banquet was cringe-worthy. Ms. Payne, you could have given this family so many other struggles but this was too much for me.
• Liza is a beautiful, educated young woman who is pining after a job with WCO, a foundation that Dorsey’s mother created. While that is noble and great, however, in DC with her education, there would be plenty of non-profits that she could have worked for to get her experience. It seemed to me like she just wanted WCO or nothing else and that was frustrating.
• How did Chicho get back to DC from Philadelphia after the gala? She rode up there with them as Maurice’s plus one but, when it’s time for them to leave, there is no mention of Chicho in the van.
• The whole story with LeDeya and WIC (also, I hate this nickname), hated it. There could have been a better way to have Dorsey swoop in and save the day but, this?! Sidenote, so Janae is Danny Ocean now? She can hack accounts and create false wire transfers?! That was just too much.

My Final Thoughts: It was a cute love story. From the beginning, as a reader, I saw where it was going. Did it take too long to get there? Yes. Did I hate the book? No. Would I read a book solely about Janae and David’s romance with backstories about both of them? Maybe.

One-Word Summary: T-Shirt