Nouveau Riche (The Scarsdale Fosters #2) by B. E. Baker

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Romance, Clean Romance, Contemporary Fiction
Content: Clean

 

After a lifetime in rags, Emerson had no idea that riches came with so many strings.

As a foster kid in the system, Emerson Duplessis never had two nickels to rub together. He worked harder than anyone else he knew and graduated with a degree in accounting—the safest career he could imagine. But when a round of unexpected layoffs leaves him unable to pay his rent, he resorts to taking temp jobs found for him by friends.

At one odd job, serving hors d’oeuvres at a funeral, his friend points out that the dead man in the massive portrait looks exactly like Emerson. The bereaved mother of the deceased turns out to be the grandmother who tried to prevent him from ever being born. Now that her only child has passed, she makes Emerson an offer.

She’ll leave her massive estate to him, but only if he shows he can properly run it, marries a high society woman, and has an heir. At one of his grandmother’s horrible parties, Emerson meets the well-educated, pampered daughter of one of his late father’s friends, Elizabeth Moorland.

Emerson dislikes her from the start, but he also discovers that she needs money, badly. He agrees to get her the money she needs if she pretends to be his girlfriend to keep his grandmother happy. But Elizabeth Moorland has a secret, and if it comes out, it will ruin both their plans.

Can Emerson manage to satisfy the woman who never wanted him in order to secure the life he’s always wanted? Or will he discover that sometimes even gold that glitters isn’t worth the price?

 

I enjoyed this second book in The Scarsdale Fosters series. I wasn't sure if this book would be picking up shortly after the first one, or if it would be about someone else entirely. It ended up being about Emerson as an adult, and although I wasn't expecting the big time jump, it worked well. So this series is obviously about fostering and adopting, but what I found kind of fun about this book is that it includes the fostering of animals as well.

In this book Emerson finds out that he is the grandson of a very wealthy woman, a woman who wants to control every aspect of his life in order for him to inherit her wealth and one day take over her company. He decided to go along with it, but it's not easy. This lady is very cold and lacks in empathy for others. There's one part in the story where Emerson's grandmother makes a very valid point about Elizabeth not protecting herself and her assets, and refuses to help her because she won't learn a lesson if she does. The problem here is that she completely lacks any empathy or compassion for Elizabeth or the animals she's caring for. This brings me to my very favorite thing about this story. It's how it emphasizes that sometimes what matters most is what's in the heart. Elizabeth was acting on what was in her heart, trying to do what was right, and she may have made some unwise decisions along the way regarding her financial situation, but she was doing good in the world and had a big heart, and sometimes acting on pure love and faith is the only way one can go. I think sometimes it can be difficult for someone with lots of money to understand that. 

Grandma improves later and it's nice to kind of see what's behind her behavior, and to see that she actually has a heart buried in there somewhere. During this part of the book there's this whole scene at a bus stop bench where she waits for Emerson so she can talk to him, that I found very amusing. It was so unexpected that it had me giggling.

The romance between Elizabeth and Emerson was nice and sweet, and I always enjoy a fake dating scenario. I did feel like the tension between them could have been amplified a bit more and drawn out for a longer period of time, but I liked them together. I enjoyed getting to see Seren and Dave in this book a little and also the other kids they took in over the years. I'm interested to see how they came to be adopted and how their stories will play out.

Thanks to the author for providing me with an ARC of this book.