Review: How to Seduce a Billionaire

April 1, 2015
Author: Portia Da Costa
Publisher: Black Lace
Year: 2015
ISBN: 9780352347909
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
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How to Seduce a Billionaire is a very misleading book. Firstly, it isn’t about seducing billionaires at all (except by mistake) and secondly, despite tall claims of BDSM and 50 Shades of Grey-like antics, the book is entirely tame.

Portia Da Costa is a Sunday Times, New York Times and USA Today bestselling authoress who writes romantic erotica for women. How to Seduce a Billionaire is a stand alone book part of the Black Lace Collection.

At its core, this is a story about Jess Lockhart – a 29 year old virgin who leads a humdrum life and seeks true love desperately, after having put her love life on hold due to family commitments. Her new boss, handsome billionaire Ellis McKenna, seems perfect for the job and beds women at whim to boot.

A chance meeting in the rain leads to them falling in love at first sight. What follows is sexual harassment, though it’s considered tolerable since the perpetrator is a rich, handsome and a relatively young billionaire. The attraction between the pair is evident but here comes the hook. Ellis suffered a great personal loss earlier in his life which has left him emotionally vacant, rendering him incapable of falling in love with anyone. And so, he believes in casual dalliances and short-term relationships instead.

This doesn’t stop the two leads from immediately falling into bed with each other and the authoress from describing the predictable plot developments for the rest of the book. They grapple with their feelings and regularly talk to themselves in their heads, chiding themselves for their ‘naughty’ thoughts.

The billionaire’s internal rants are almost all about his billions and the loss of his previous love. Jess thinks only about how their fling isn’t permanent and that a billionaire would never fall for ‘someone like her’. The characters are poorly described, as though only for formality. Jess’ intelligence is mentioned often but never substantiated. The only takeaway about Ellis is that he is rich and handsome.

At 400 pages, How to Seduce a Billionaire is painstakingly long. The story has no twists or turns and reading the back cover is enough to understand the entire plot of this book. 

Compared to much shorter Harlequin titles, How to Seduce a Billionaire is neither titillating nor new. It follows a tried and tested method and doesn’t engage the reader. It’s sappy and made me roll my eyes at the excessively used cliches.

Regardless of whether or not you liked Fifty Shades of Grey, you won’t like this.

In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard of Fifty Shades.. Here‘s a snappy article to catch you up to speed! 

Paridhi Rustogi

Paridhi Rustogi

Writer at IndiaBookStore
Environmental Engineering student. Love words and languages and art. Currently suffering from wanderlust.
Paridhi Rustogi

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