I listened to this one on audio, and I remember why Will Watt is an auto-listen narrator. His French accent for Nico is superb, and he tracks Titus’s arc so precisely that you can hear the confidence shift in his voice by the second half of the book. You can feel both characters’ vulnerability more clearly when someone is reading it to you.

This was a comfortable 4 star read for me. The setup is wonderfully absurd, Titus accidentally? intentionally? inherits a fortune by marrying a dying woman on her deathbed, and Nico comes in too late as the French comte who was supposed to get that money. Classic swindler trope. What I liked about Titus is that he figures Nico out pretty early and decides to let it play out anyway. He needed that after a genuinely bad prior relationship, and it gives him more agency than the golden retriever energy reads would suggest. The paint and color history mixed through is also genuinely fascinating. I looooved all of it.

Compared to other KJC books, the plot in this one didn’t grip me as much as the characters did, and the heat runs lower than her average.

Over all, solid mid-tier KJC comfort read. If you’re going to read this one, I recommend the audio.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​