Method For Matrimony by Anne Malcom - A Book Review
Synopsis:
Marrying Kip Goodman was a last resort.
But she was desperate. Desperate enough to marry a man she despised.
All she had to do was get through the year married to a cocky alpha male who only thought of women as notches on his bedpost.
She had her reasons.
So did he.
They had to lie to their friends and families, try to survive a year with each other.
It was that simple.
Until it became clear she had to resist him.
Because Kip Goodman wasn’t who she thought he was.
And that was dangerous.
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Tropes:
- Surprise Pregnancy
- Forced Proximity
- Marriage of Convenience
- Hate To Love You
I was first introduced to Anne Malcom through reading Recipe For Love in January. I absolutely loved Recipe for Love and it quickly became my first 5⭐️ read of 2024.
When I saw that there was a sequel to the book I loved so much which had earned the first 5⭐️ rating of the year, I knew I had to read any other books in the series, so I instantly added Method For Matrimony to my TBR Jar.
Method For Matrimony follows Kip Goodman and Fiona Owen’s, friends of Rowan and Nora from Recipe For Love, in their journey of navigating their marriage of convenience to secure a green card that will allow Fiona to remain in the U.S, so that she doesn’t have to return to her Australian roots, where her previous life and secrets await her.
The story follows Kip and Fiona navigating their new marriage with one another, in their attempt to make their marriage appear real to their closest friends, only Fiona and Kip despise each other, making their marriage even more unbelievable. The pair agree to rules that each must abide by, consisting of living together in Fiona’s cottage and only sleeping with people from outside of their overbearing and nosy town.
As the pair develop further into their fake marriage, tensions begin to rise and as a result, the pair adapt their agreement to allow them to be intimate one time, allowing them to get the sexual tension they share out of their systems. Only this lights the fire in both Kip and Fiona and the one time they agreed to, is not enough – leading to them to continue a roommates with benefits situation.
Following these actions, Fiona ends up pregnant which is unexpected given that she was previously told she’d never bare children. This impacts their marriage, where the pair had finally settled into a civil routine of their fake marriage. After Fiona reveals the news to Kip, he is furious, stating that Fiona intended to trap him in their fake marriage. His fury results in him to reveal to Fiona that he will have no involvement with the child he fathered and after the baby’s birth, he will divorce Fiona and leave town.
The story then follows the journey of Fiona navigating her miracle pregnancy that is filled with the traumas and PTSD from her previous pregnancies which ended in miscarriage. During this time, Kip becomes cold and distant with Fiona, until she’s involved in a serious car accident. This results in Kip to realise his feelings for Fiona and that he cannot make the mistakes he did in the past, as he now has a second chance at looking after his wife and child. His actions of neglecting his wife and unborn child, resulted in the small town of Jupiter to turn on Kip, taking Fiona’s side.
Following the accident, Kip revealed to Fiona his past in which was the reason for his initial reaction to the pregnancy. Kip’s past was revealed in Recipe For Love, where when fighting in the war, Kip’s first wife and child were involved in an accident that resulted in the loss of their lives. With Kip being away, serving his country, he wasn’t aware of the devastating news until after they passed and wasn’t even able to make it to their funerals to say goodbye. Fiona is understanding towards Kip’s trauma and reveals her reasoning for leaving her Australian home land. Fiona reveals that she was in an abusive relationship where her ex husband would regularly abuse her for miscarriages she suffered. With the pair revealing their history to one another, Fiona is not so quick to forgive Kip, as she never once let her own past change or impact how she treated her spouse, unlike Kip did. Fiona believed that Kip’s history couldn’t be an excuse for his behaviour. Kip reveals to Fiona that he is determined to win back the trust of his wife and create the family he devastatingly lost.
With a broken wrist and a few ribs, Fiona returns home to prepare for the birth of her daughter. As time passes by, Fiona and Kip return to the routine of their marriage, before the pregnancy announcement – leading them to come closer and closer together, with Fiona slowly forgiving Kip. Only Fiona is apprehensive of Kips words and when her green card arrives, she informs Kip that he has the option to leave and follow through on his initial promise – only Kip is truthful on his words of winning back his wife, as he believes their marriage is no longer fake.
The pair finally rejoin and after finding out about Fiona’s history, Kip takes it upon himself to delve deeper into her ex husband – making his life hell in revenge for the way he treated Fiona. Only Fiona’s ex husband arrives in Maine Jupiter to seek revenge for loosing his family after Fiona, as a result of Kip’s actions. Fiona’s ex husband arrives unannounced at her home and discovers she’s pregnant and claims it is his child, before embarking on a battle with Fiona, in which he attempts to drown her in the sea near her cottage. Fiona is saved by Kip who comes to the rescue, battling her ex husband, before snapping his neck and subsequently killing him.
Fiona realises it’s time to get back in contact with her estranged mother, where she reveals her pregnancy to her. Joyed with the news of her first grand baby, Fiona’s mother states she will be flying to America for the arrival of the baby. This makes Fiona and Kip realise that their small cottage will be too small, so Kip enlists the help of his colleagues to extend Fiona’s cottage by the sea.
Fiona reveals the truth to Nora about her and Kip’s original marriage agreement, with Nora offering Fiona part ownership of the bakery, as security for Fiona placing roots in America and therefore having a reason not to leave.
The story ends with the pair navigating their marriage that went from fake to real and the birth of daughter.
There was just something about this book that I really struggled to connect with. I really wanted to love this book as much as I enjoyed the first book and fully believed I would love it just as much, but I really struggled to find an emotional attachment to the characters, to sort of care about their story.
I hit the nail on the head with the predictions I made at the end of Recipe For Love – I knew it was going to be a marriage of convenience to secure a green card. Although, I wasn’t expecting Fiona’s history – Kip’s I already knew of.
I felt like this book didn’t hold any emotion for me, like Recipe For Love did and maybe that was because I didn’t have any emotional attachment to the main characters. I didn’t care for them in the first book, so I didn’t really care for them in the second. With Recipe For Love, I felt like I was on a roller coaster of emotions – I cried, I laughed and I felt my heart warm with love, but with Method for Matrimony, there was nothing there. I think the scene where Fiona was battling in the ocean with her ex husband was supposed to be heart racing, but I just didn’t feel anything.
I will say, I found Anne’s writing style very easy to visualise, especially when it came to the description of Fiona’s personality. I could fully envision her sassy and strong headed personality, which was something I did like about the character. As for Kip, I felt like his story being revealed in Recipe For Love resulted in it to not have as a big impact in his book. It felt repetitive to revisit his history, when it had been mentioned in the first book – I suppose it was intended for those who read the books as a standalone.
After reading the sequel to this series, I’m unsure whether anymore books would follow? It was implied in the authors note of Recipe For Love the possible routes, storylines and characters that may appear in subsequent books. However, I felt there was a lack of mentioning or alluding to these in Method For Matrimony. Also the characters that were hinted at having books from the authors note in Recipe For Love, hardly had any mention in the book, some not at all. This makes me unsure whether I’d read them, because they weren’t hinted to or teased in this book. I think I’d only read them if they included my favourite tropes.
The story reminded me a lot of Colleen Hoover’s Ugly Love, which was (one of) my favourite reads by her – also my first. The story’s had a similar storyline premise of the male character having a traumatic history where he lost his child and was against falling in love/having more children. I’m surprised I didn’t enjoy this book as much, because I loved Ugly Love.
It bothered me a bit that it wasn’t revealed what Fiona and Kip named their daughter. We were along for the whole journey and it felt like I was robbed of finding out what she was called. Made the story feel like a cliffhanger and anticlimactic because I was left with answers.
I’m not sure how I felt with the whole Kip snapping Fiona’s ex husband’s neck and not being investigated deeply plot. Felt like it was made a big thing, just to be brushed past afterwards.
I do think the lack of emotional connection towards the characters made it slightly harder to read and for me to pick up the book and be motivated. So for that, Recipe For Love remains my favourite read by Anne Malcom and favourite of the series (that’s if I read other books on the series – depending on if they are written).
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Georgia
♥
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