Books › Smokescreen
Smokescreen
287 pages
A high-angst, emotionally charged vintage romance where duty collides with forbidden, undeniable passion.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a classic, tempestuous soap opera where every glance is loaded with unspoken tension. The narrative moves at a brisk, dialogue-heavy pace, plunging the reader straight into a web of family secrets, immense wealth, and heavy emotional baggage. The atmosphere is thick with brooding angst and the delicious, forbidden thrill of a taboo-adjacent attraction. It is a story built on intense, melodramatic confrontations and the slow crumbling of carefully constructed emotional walls. The prose is earnest and visceral, focusing deeply on the characters' internal turmoil and physical reactions to one another. It is a perfect, indulgent escape for readers who love vintage category romance, intense alpha heroes, and the irresistible pull of a love that feels entirely off-limits.
- Mood
- angsty
- tense
- emotionally charged
- brooding
- Tone
- melodramatic
- intense
- earnest
- passionate
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- forbidden attraction · wealth and obligation · family estrangement · guilt and duty · marriage of convenience
- The writing
- Dramatic and dialogue-driven, leaning heavily into the visceral, physical sensations of emotional turmoil.
- The arc
- Moves from a place of guarded obligation and guilt into a tempestuous, undeniable passion that shatters carefully built emotional walls.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave vintage, high-angst category romance with taboo-adjacent tropes and brooding, intense heroes.
Content notes
- death of a spouse
- step-parent/step-child romance trope
- emotional manipulation
About the book
On the face of it, after her tycoon husband’s death, Olivia had the world as her oyster. She could not pretend to be brokenhearted – how could she, when the marriage had been strictly one of convenience, to put it at its mildest? - and as a result she was now an immensely rich and powerful widow. Nevertheless, she felt very concerned that her husband’s son Alex, who had been estranged from him for so long, had been left nothing, and she was determined to set matters right. But then she met Alex – and found that his love was the one thing in the world she could not have...
Description from Open Library.
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