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Title: Heartbreak for Hire
Author: Sonia Hartl
Sub-genre: Contemporary
Publication Date: July 27, 2021
I’m revealing my age here, but sometimes, I find it hard to read ebooks. My eyes hurt after a long session, and as someone who has always relished curling up in bed with a book, it’s just not the same. It’s hard to curl up in bed with my iPad! So when I find myself hunkering down with an ebook, I know it’s a good one. I could not put down Heartbreak for Hire. It had me captivated from the first page and I blew through it over the course of a day. It had everything I want in a romance!
Brinkley is an artist with dreams of opening her own gallery. But that takes money, and with her “useless” (according to her mother anyway) art degree, she needs to get creative when it comes to saving. When she is offered a job at Heartbreak for Hire after a brutal breakup, she jumps at the chance to enact her revenge fantasies all while earning a whole lotta cash. Brinkley is hired by various women who are having trouble with egotistical men and it is Brinkley’s job to find unique ways to humiliate them. Usually she is hired by fellow employees to take down bosses or male coworkers who do everything from sexually harass their peers to steal their work. When she is hired to humiliate Mark, she can’t help but feel like he might not actually be deserving of her treatment, and after she hooks up with him–an H4H serious no no–she has to figure out what she is really doing with her career. And then when her boss–a woman who has promised all of her female employees a safe and empowered space–changes the business model to include male heartbreakers, Brinkley is really pushed to reevaluate. And THEN Mark shows up as the male heartbreaker she is supposed to train and oversee. Throughout the course of the book, Brinkley has a lot to reckon with: her career, her relationship with her mother, and her growing feelings for Mark. Of course, in the end, she is able to find her happily ever after.
I think what so brilliantly captivated me from the beginning of this book is Sonia’s voice. She is able to effortlessly combine humor and heart, and that is such a difficult thing to do. Also, this book get super steamy from the get, which I am here for. I loved following Brinkley’s journey, her interactions with her mother were so relatable, and her job struggles felt so real. Sonia weaves together multiple issues in Brinkley’s life in a way that feels so organic and it reads so beautifully. I loved Mark and his sweater vests, I am always here for a nerdy hero. And all of the side characters were so well drawn, from the condescending boss to the supportive best friends. Really, this was just a super fun and entertaining read that captured my interest and held it!
Overall Rating: 5 stars