Review: Couple Who Fooled the World by Maisey Yates

At the end of the second week of my three and half week trip, I was repacking my suitcase, about to get on yet another plane - my 7th flight in two weeks  – this time from Zurich to London – and I was panicking because I’d finished what I was reading the night before and needed a new book. I usually know exactly what I’m going to read next, but had decided to be more spontaneous on this trip – that’s the point of having a Kindle, right?  You can carry your whole library around with you.

 
I turned on the Kindle to try and figure out what I wanted to read next and was very happy to see The Couple Who Fooled the World had appeared on my Kindle’s home page.  I’d pre-ordered it weeks earlier, and had forgotten when it would be released.  Also, when traveling, I lose all sense of dates.  No more worries about what to read that day.

I got to the Zurich airport hours earlier than I needed to be there.  Then my flight was delayed.  But none of this bothered me at all, because I was fully immersed in the adventures of The Couple Who Fooled the World.

I absolutely love the characters Maisey Yates creates.  I’ve yet to be disappointed with any of her books.  In this case, we have two very wealthy, very successful leaders in the tech field.  Ferro and Julia each own their own companies – creating things like phones and navigation systems.  They’re fierce competitors, but in order to beat out their mutual competition for a project, Ferro suggests to Julia that they work together.  His system is more sophisticated, hers is more user-friendly.  But in order for their plan to seem convincing, they’re going to pretend like they’re dating.  It’s only until they get the project, then they plant to go back to being enemies.

Sometimes things don’t quite work out as planned.  In order to pretend to date, they have to start spending time together.  And while they’re spending time together, their attraction for each other is growing.  They’re both adults, they can do this, no strings attached, then go their separate ways.  No problem, right?

But these two, as successful as they are in the tech world, are completely messed up emotionally.  As a teenager, in order to get off the streets of Rome, Ferro worked as a prostitute.  Even though he’s moved far beyond those days, he still feels tainted by what he did.  Mentally, he’s still trying to run from his past and feels that he’s undeserving of ever having a real lover.  And Julia’s avoided men most of her life after a traumatic experience she had as a teenager.  Her whole life, she’s been made to feel that if she was herself she would be regarded as weird or strange.  No matter that her “weirdness” turned her into a successful billionaire who designed a very popular smartphone.  She has a team of people hired to make her appear “normal” to the rest of the world. 

They’re both damaged enough to be perfect for each other.  They manage to see in each other what they’re missing in life.  Ferro convinces Julia that she doesn’t need to keep hiding who she is, and she finally makes him believe that he doesn’t have to keep living in shame for what he did to survive as a teenager.  Of course, it takes them a while to get to that point, but what a fun journey that is.

Another excellent read by Maisey Yates.  Glamorous setting, interesting, complicated characters, lots of hot sex and romance.  This book is very fast paced.  I couldn’t put it down.  It was a bit awkward reading some of the um, sexy times, while sitting next to two college boys who were getting smashed on Scotch on the flight to London.  They kept wanting to talk and be friendly and didn’t seem to understand that the book I was reading was much more interesting to me than they were.  I ended up finishing the book that night.  I sort of wished I hadn’t rushed through it because I wanted more time with the characters, but was glad to have had the distraction during what could have been a long, boring travel day.