Review Blitz ~ Mr. Moneybags by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward ~ Sarah A’s Review

From New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Authors
Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

I met Bianca in an elevator.

She was on her way to interview me when we got stuck.

The beautiful, raven-haired reporter assumed I was a delivery guy because of the way I was dressed.

She had no clue I was really Dex Truitt, the wealthy, successful businessman she’d dubbed “Mister Moneybags”—her afternoon appointment.

Bianca told me how much she hated Dex’s type—snobby, over-educated, silver- spooned men who didn’t appreciate the simple things in life.

So, after the elevator finally started moving again, I cancelled the interview and let her believe I was someone I wasn’t—a bike messenger named Jay. I loved the way she looked at the fake me and didn’t want it to end.

I began dating her as “Jay”—all the while letting her interview the real me over email.

I didn’t expect that our chemistry online would be just as hot.

I didn’t expect the mess I’d gotten myself into.

I didn’t expect that Jay and Dex would fall in love with her.

And she was falling for two men.

Only, both men were me.

And when she found out, we were both going to lose her.

Nothing could have prepared me for that day. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for what came after.

All good things must come to an end, right?
Except our ending was one I didn’t see coming.

Read the First Chapter here

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I’m not sure what I was expecting from Mister Moneybags but it wasn’t what I read, for sure. Even as I write this I’m not sure if I understand why the book took the turns it did. It felt… strange, off, forced. Parts of it just didn’t work for me. Perhaps because if an author is going to toe the line Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward did in this book, I prefer the book to go all the way there. Also, because that little bit of tension that was thrown in at the end seems like it should have been enough to carry an entire book and I really would have enjoyed that.

Mister Moneybags, despite its tiny foray into the taboo, was a light fun read. It was an interesting take on the rich man/average girl trope. It was interesting to see Bianca have all of the power in the relationship despite the fact could have easily been overbearing and controlling given his position in the business and social hierarchy. It was also very refreshing to see a person who’d been raised without wanting for anything be so down to earth and have the self-awareness to see when his privilege was coloring his perception of things. I quite enjoyed the juxtaposition of what was expected from the characters with the reality of how they actually behaved.

I did have a hard time with some of Dex’s internal dialogue. It seemed strange and stilted, and, to me, it took away from the experience of the book. I am a firm believer in show, don’t tell when I read and this affected that for me. While I know not everyone reads in the same way or even have similar thought processes, I would have liked to have seen these little asides dealt with differently. I also felt like the first two-thirds, or so, of the book and the last third, though loosely linked by the common theme of deception, were almost two different stories. I knew that it was meant to be the conflict leading to the ultimate climax of the book, but it just felt incongruous to how the story started.

Overall, Mister Moneybags was enjoyable and would be a great read for someone who wants to try something a little new, a little different, someone who wants to read a book that flirts with the idea of things not discussed in polite society. I’d really love to see what Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward would if they threw caution to the wind and completely blurred the line between what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Vi Keeland

Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestselling author. With more than a million books sold, her titles have appeared in over fifty Bestseller lists and are currently translated in fourteen languages. She lives in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.

Penelope Ward

Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today, and #1 Wall Street Journal Bestselling author of thirteen novels. With over a million books sold, her titles have placed on the New York Times Bestseller list fifteen times. She is the proud mother of a beautiful 12-year-old girl with autism (the inspiration for the character Callie in Gemini) and a 10-year-old boy. Penelope, her husband, and kids reside in Rhode Island.