THE MISSUS

A reformed playboy settles into married life with his former maid.

Maxim Trevelyan, a London playboy and newly minted Earl of Trevethick, fell in love with Alessia Demachi in the first book of the series, The Mister (2019). Alessia was trafficked from Albania and later kidnapped and rescued by Maxim. This book picks up immediately following those events, with Maxim and Alessia at her family’s home in Albania, planning to marry. The plot focuses on domestic matters: planning the wedding ceremony, securing Alessia's citizenship status, and managing Maxim's problems with the Trevethick estate. The emotional arcs are simplistic and repetitive: Over and over again Maxim wonders how to keep his new wife happy, while Alessia worries that she isn’t beautiful and cultured enough to satisfy such a renowned playboy. His family and former lovers disapprove of the match and try to disrupt the couple's happiness with undermining comments and petty schemes. After the pair returns to London, there is very little of interest to fuel the plot other than Alessia’s sudden determination to find one of the younger girls who was trafficked with her. James’ writing is choppy and discordant, shifting rapidly between narrators with only the difference in point of view—Maxim in first person and Alessia in third—to indicate a change in speaker. Maxim’s voice is uncomfortably banal. Upon seeing his bride on their wedding day, he thinks, “Dude, don’t get emotional.” Even James completists looking for a last glimmer of Fifty Shades of Grey magic are bound to be disappointed.

Simple and trite.