by Chloe Hooper
First published 2012
Liese Campbell shows properties in Melbourne to Alexander Colquhoun, heir to a farming fortune seeking a city apartment. After their first viewing ends in bed, he pays her three hundred dollars. She jokes about the half price discount, treating their arrangement as an erotic game rather than prostitution. Alexander calls whenever he visits the city, and Liese finds the money useful for paying debts after losing her job in England. When she plans to return home, Alexander invites her to spend a weekend at his grand Victorian mansion for an irresistible sum. At the estate, surrounded by endless farmland, he surprises her with an engagement ring. Desperate to escape poverty, Liese accepts his proposal despite its absurdity. But Alexander demands she confess her activities with other men first. When she insists she is not a prostitute, he produces letters from supposed former clients describing explicit encounters, including references to her Norfolk schooldays. Trapped in his house, Liese must discover who wrote the letters and why, while confronting both Alexander's twisted fantasies and her own desires.
Genres: fiction, romance, crime, contemporary, 21st-century, contemporary-romance
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Melbourne, Victorian Mansion
Period: 21st Century
192 pages · Paperback · Jonathan Cape