The Vanilla Bet

by Ella Emerson

[stacey_is_sassy]

****2.5 Stars****

I received an ARC from the author to read and review.

The Vanilla Bet was unfortunately not a win for me.

In this story we have an ego loaded hero named Trace who treats life like it’s one big party. Trace’s father has plans to (and is trying to) groom him to take over the family company in the future. Unfortunately, Trace has been brought up with money and uses it to get his way in most things…including getting girls. Vanessa is a young woman who moved away from her family home to study in Palm Beach. She had been physically abused by an ex-boyfriend who stalked her. Vanilla Vanessa, as Trace’s friends call her, isn’t looking for a relationship. After her disastrous high school boyfriend, she rejects a few attempts from boys she met. One victim of her rejection is Seth, who also happens to be a friend of Trace. Seth decides to get back at her by having a bet with Trace over poker, that if Trace loses, he has to go out with her in a vanilla relationship.

Seriously, this book read like a High School romance. If you removed the sex scene, it could easily be classified as YA, but in this day and age, you could probably leave it in and it would be realistic. The guys talked and acted like boys, not like young men and the girls acted like bitchy high school girls fighting over the cool boys. The one thing that shocked me, was the amount of alcohol consumed by these kids, even at a bar. If these kids were over 21, I’ll eat my hat. Maybe when our hero gets past the stage where he thinks his “death glare” will stop people from doing bad things, we might see an improvement.

There is a suspense portion to the story, with a stalker trying to scare Vanessa and keep Trace away. Trace becomes her protector and with her friends help they try to solve the mystery of who it is. To be honest, I’m not sure I want to head to Palm Beach if this was an example of the police and detective work. These kids managed to solve the mystery and deal with the bad guys while the police held their clip boards asking questions and “getting back” to them when they worked it out.

Unfortunately, the lack of contractions was my biggest problem with the author’s writing and using words/language such as gonna drove me to distraction. The storyline was interesting and with some editing the author has the potential for producing a good mystery. I wish the author success in the future.