Book Review: The Wicked Heir (Spare Heirs #3) by Elizabeth Michels

Book Review: The Wicked Heir (Spare Heirs #3) by Elizabeth Michels

Rating: 3 Stars

Published July 4th 2017 by Sourcebooks Casablanca
Summary: The Spare Heirs Society Cordially Invites You to Meet Fallon St. James: The Mastermind

When the love of Lady Isabelle Fairlyn's life is betrothed to her twin sister, Isabelle vows to find a suitable replacement before the end of the season. He must be a talented dancer, have a keen fashion sense, and be perfectly dashing in every way.

Fallon St. James is the farthest thing from perfectly anything. As head of the secretive Spare Heirs Society, he must stick to the shadows...even as Isabelle's friendship pulls him reluctantly into the light. But when Isabelle gets involved with the one man who could destroy Spares, Fallon must decide between protecting his life's work―or risking everything to save the woman whose warm smile leaves him breathless.
(from Goodreads)

Review: I don't know if I admire or abhor Isabelle. She's definitely a dreamer, and often lets herself get carried away by her fantasies. From the start, she decided that St. James is a pirate, which was kind of cute and quirky. Sometimes she comes off as pretty saccharine sweet, like cotton candy, and it's rather off-putting. St. James has a bit of a God complex, a bit of hero complex, and apparently thinks he's too important to eat. (Dude, the world is not going to fall apart if you stop to eat a sandwich.) Isabelle brings out a playful side in him that I feel like is a pretty far stretch from the extremely serious workaholic he's written as. They even get into some bedroom roleplay fun, which HE initiates to her delight. I was kinda like, "Yeah, you go St. James. Get down with your bad bedroom play self."

Got to about page 300 and was sick of this book. It was good, but it just went on too long and got really repetitive. I feel like it didn't really need to be 423 pages. The major repetitiveness almost brought this down to a 2 star rating for me, but it did pick up again at the end which saved it a bit and brought it in at a decent 3 stars. If it had about 100 less pages of repetitive "I must work harder for the sake of everyone but myself" and "Woe is me, I'm trapped here, I fall in love at the drop of a hat but this time it's REAL insta-love," I'd have rated it 4 stars.

This is the third book in the Spare Heirs series, but it can be read as a stand alone. There are some references to other spare heirs, and brief allusions to two of Isabelle's friends who are apparently married to members of the Spare Heirs Society, which I assume are the couples features in the first two books. There wasn't anything that made it so this book wasn't understandable, but there may be some slight spoilers for the first two books. There is also a lot of lead up to what I assume will be the fourth book between Isabelle's sister Victoria and another of the Spare Heirs, especially with the quasi-cliffhanger ending.