This Age Gap Billionaire Romance is available for free on Amazon Kindle Prime Reading and it’s a short novella of 60 some pages therefore a really quick read however the plot line doesn’t flow and the characters fall flat.

Carina Cameron only has one person in life her grandmother. And she’s in the hospital, fresh out of surgery, and needs care her insurance doesn’t cover. Carina’s age is undisclosed however readers are made to presume she’s around twenty-five years old when she mentions the job she got right out of high school and held for seven years before getting fired. The man responsible for Carina’s jobless predicament makes her a proposition she cannot refuse: he will pay her twenty thousand dollars to go to the monthly Carnival Ball and dance with the man wearing the hunter green and gold filigree mask, but Carina must not give him her name and she must leave the ball by midnight. It’s like a true modern-day Cinderella and he’s her fairy Godfather with wicked strings attached.

Ryan Stirling is one of the wealthiest men in New York; at least he would be if his inheritance wouldn’t be in trust by twelve trustees chosen by his late father. To claim it fully he must marry by his fortieth birthday which is seven months away. To find his bride-to-be, he’s been hosting these masquerade balls in the hopes to feel the “spark” he’s looking for. It’s been five years of monthly balls and he’s yet to find the one, will he find her before time runs out?

In a true Cinderella moment, Ryan sees Carina walk into the ball and finally feels the spark he’s been waiting for, he wastes no time getting by her side and as the night progresses things heat up between them quickly, but the connection is two dimensional, lacking. As the clock chimes midnight Carina runs out with Ryan trailing after her. Unlike Cinderella Ryan doesn’t find his princess. Carina returns to her Fairy Godfather who has another proposition for her; let’s just call it like it is blackmail. Now she has until summer to make her prince fall in love with her and then vanish from his life.

The confusion in the plot line is jarring the way it goes back and forth, details from previous chapters are mixed up in further chapters, as if to make decisions taken seem more rational, and the lackluster connection between the characters are issues that are possibly due to the shortness of the novella and made this a 2 star read. Maybe Rhodes next book in the series Until Summer will show more character depth and an ebbing plotline.