Make it or break it: The Arrangement

 Book: The Arrangement by Robyn Harding

Started: Nov 8, 2021

Finished: Nov 12, 2021

Rating: 4/5

So before I begin this review I thought I would mention that this book was my make it or break it point in reading. The last book that I trudged through was downright awful. I thought that it would surely destroy any desire of mine to read for a while. I found this book browsing around through my public library. I was looking for a sort of light read with romance, something to cleanse my mind after the muck it had been through with my last assignment. Finishing it within four days made me realize that maybe my spark for reading wasn't dead after all. Now onto the review:

Main plot: Broke art student succumbs to the sugar baby trade.

Enter our main character: Natalie, a girl who comes from a somewhat hard childhood and life. After her dad leaves, she struggles to fit in with her stepdad and mom as they create what she describes as a "perfect family." Believing to not belong and remain in the shadow of her siblings, she gets into an prestigious art school in New York. There she plans to escape from her small town which houses her psychopath ex-boyfriend and a static life which she has no intention of living.

New York life tends to be a bit harder than expected. As she struggles to pay her ever growing bills related to rent and tuition, she eventually delves deeper into the life of her classmate Ava. One with a similar background to her own: growing up from nothing and working towards a career in art. However, there's one big difference between the two that Nat struggles to understand: How is it that she is barely surviving to make ends meet, while Ava lives in a penthouse with plenty of moolah to spare? She soon pries the answer out of Ava: She's a SUGARBABY.

Ava goes on to teach Nat how to get into this trade, explaining that it is a dangerous game to play for once you're in, it can be a bit difficult to go back to normal life. After a quick orientation on how to connect with a sugardaddy, Nat has her first meetup. She meets the dashing, rich, and who she perceives as charming: Gabriel.

Gabriel (Gabe) is exactly what Nat was NOT expecting, he's fun, witty, and not too mention handsome she dare say for a man in his 50s. Together they form "an arrangement," Gabe solves Nat's money issues while also becoming her protector and lover. There is just one main problem: Nat breaks the one rule a sugarbaby cannot → FALLS IN LOVE WITH HER SUGARDADDY.

Gabe develops feelings for Natalie as well, but his wife Celeste and daughter Violet will always come first. Nat begins to spiral from a woman with reservations about the sugarbaby ways, to an obsessive, needy, and delusional character with seemingly violent tendencies. Things come to a head when eventually a body is found outside of Gabe's apartment. Two questions linger in the air:

1. Who is it?

2. Who did it?

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

Gabe ends up dead in a New York stairwell. So know we know who is it BUT who did it?

Let's examine our suspects:

Natalie: A girl with nothing and everything to lose, desperate to keep the relationship with Gabe alive no matter the cost.

Celeste: Gabe's wife, a woman recently in remission, doting mother, and oblivious to her husbands many affairs and sugarbaby/daddy relationships.

Violet: Gabe's daughter, a girl trying to find her way while maintaining a rocky relationship with her dad. 

Answer: Violet

With the help of her mother Celeste, together they frame Natalie for the murder of her father. Celeste believes Nat is getting what she deserves, but eventually indirectly reveals to her that Nat did not murder her husband. Nat was never totally sure if she did it or not because she was drugged and drunk the night of the incident. She is eventually tried for the murder of Gabe and eventually accepts a plea deal that thankfully due to Celeste's speech siding with the girl, shortens the sentence. After a brief time skip we come to see that Nat has gone back to her hometown and is working off the debt owed to her parents by babysitting her younger siblings.

Celeste knew all along that Gabe was having affairs and playing the role of a sugardaddy, and also knew that if she ever tried to divorce him it would ALL be bad. He'd fight tooth and nail for their daughter and because Celeste hadn't worked since becoming a mother, would make sure that she would not get much money.

Why 4/5?

Okay I'll admit, I was really hoping that this book would be a bit more steamy. Would I consider it a romance? NO. This book was definitely a thriller through and through. I think part of me hated that Natalie totally veered off her course of becoming an illustrator, and became this needy, psychopathic, nicompoop of a person that she describes herself as hating. Her ex-boyfriend literally had the same tendencies! In the end not only are her dreams destroyed, but she is forced to accept a fate with no hope of recourse. It was shameful enough to be exposed unrightfully for what she was doing but to have to live with the rep that she murdered someone?? Please come on give her a break. Gabe was a bastard, really hoping to have his cake and eat it too. I HATE unfulfilling endings, this one just rubbed me the wrong way. Obviously being a sugarbaby was not an ideal scenario, but Nat was desperate and Gabe KNEW that she was putting ALL her hopes in him. He reveled in it and was even aroused by it. SICK!

***END SPOILERS***

Would I recommend this?

Yes: if you are looking for thriller and NOT romance.

No: if you want loads of romance and/or steamy scenes.

I would have appreciated it more IF I would not have kept holding onto the idea that it was a romance novel.

Well that's it for tonight folks!

Dreamer102 out and onto the next one. 🦋