My Possessive Billionaire is an entertaining, tropey romance that—despite a few odd writing choices—ultimately works.
★★★★☆
by Neilani Alejandrino
Sophia's family has long promised her hand in marriage to Monteiro family heir and billionaire playboy Enrique. But Sophia has different plans, and does everything she can to get out of marrying him.
As you can probably guess from the title, My Possessive Billionaire dives head first into tropes and lets its lighthearted story do most of the lifting.
Sophia is a pretty generic sweet, virginal female protagonist. Enrique fits the rich, playboy archetype to a T. But Alejandrino does an excellent job making them both relatable, flawed, and likeable. Characters don’t always make good decisions, but they always act in a way that makes sense for who they are.
We're also introduced to Enrique's cousin, Draco, who shares his interest in Sophia. The family squabbles between the two of them add just the right amount of drama and they're both easy to root for—no obvious bad guy here.
About half way through, the author takes an unexpected turn to follow Draco as he reconnects with an old flame—a completely non sequitur plotline that never manages to feel like a cohesive part of the story. (And yes, this is all while he's still pursuing Sophia.) There are large sections of the story devoted just to this thread, and they end up feeling like filler content that is only there to pad the word count. (Since the entire book is under 60k words, that just might be the case.)
The book also suffers from poor editing and formatting, which at times distracts you from the story. The third person narration will occasionally shift to first for a sentence or two at a time. It seems to be a mistake rather than an intentional style or technique. Individual POV shifts and scene transitions are abrupt and at times hard to follow, with no markers of any kind to delineate sections.
At times, the writing seems to lean in a moralistic direction. Enrique describes his perfect woman as "very submissive and a virgin" and says that he can't "stand promiscuous women", despite being a well-known playboy himself. We could chalk those up to character development showing how misogynistic and hypocritical he is, but similar ideas pop up from Sophia throughout the story. She continually shames him for his sexual history, calling him an "uncivilized sex-starved maniac" and a "sexual predator". It would be nice to see a more sex-positive take from this author.
As a quick, fun read, this book fits the bill. The ending is sweet and clever, and the story is simple yet engaging. While editing would go a long way toward elevating this book, it still does its job well as-is. It's a nice light read with solid writing and enough juicy bits to round out the story.
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