Matchgin Hearts by Ellie Hartwood

From Goodreads:

Can a self-centered prima donna survive the trial by fire and find her own everlasting love?

Delia Campbell is abrasive, self-centered, beautiful . . . and on parole. With freedom finally in sight, she's ready to meet the man of her dreams. In Delia's world that means rich . . . very rich.

But when she finds herself back in the courtroom at the mercy of an alarmingly creative judge, Delia is tasked with helping the rich and famous in search of real happiness.

No problem. Right?
Wrong.

Delia is not a rule follower and her parole officer is nipping at her heels.

Enter Trevor Dawson, a handsome electrician with little patience for entitled, narcissistic Delia. Especially when she's recruiting him as an accomplice in one of her questionable schemes.

What could possibly go wrong?

My Take:

I have mixed feelings about this book, but in the end, it wasn't too bad. Let me try to explain. Delia is an extremely unlikable character in the beginning of the story. She's selfish and manipulative, and there really wasn't anything about her that I could relate to. This made it hard to root for her to find love. In fact, I almost quit reading.

However, I've enjoyed this author before and wanted to see if she could redeem Delia. I believe she did a pretty good job of it. By the end, I liked her much better even though she went about everything all wrong. Trevor was great, June and Patrick were great. If not for Delia's friends sticking by her and patiently letting her figure things out and grow, this would have been harder to finish.

There were many moments when I wanted to scream, "Just tell everyone the truth!" I don't know if real people would be so dumb as to do what Delia does at the end to bring everything crashing down...after everything fell apart...no spoilers here, though.

In the end, things came together despite Delia's inability to make good choices (and I understood why she struggled). It was nice to read about older characters, and all scenes of a physical nature were behind closed doors for a clean read. There weren't even swear words, either.

In the end, I give this story a 3.75 rounded to a 4 for keeping it clean.

1-5 scale and what it means:

1: I couldn’t even finish it / just plain bad

2: I hope I didn’t pay for this / disappointing

3: I didn’t hate it, but it was still missing something / forgettable but inoffensive

3.5: On the line between good and ok / like, not love

4: Solid mind candy / worth reading

4.5: So very close to perfection! / must read

5: I could not put it down and I’m still thinking about it! / a true treasure