The Billionaire’s Stubborn Lover (The Maxfield Brothers Series Book 3) by Leslie North

The Billionaire's Stubborn Lover is the third in a series of books about the Maxfields. I hadn’t read the previous two books and that might have helped. First of all, as romance writers do these days, the title has “billionaire” in the title. Isn’t anyone a millionaire anymore? Well, if I read a billionaire romance, the guy’s level of wealth and position in the world should be part of the story at some point. That’s fine, but don’t try to cash in on the billionaire romance craze by sticking it there in the title. If I didn’t see the title, I wouldn’t have thought that Nathan Maxfield, the hero, was even a millionaire. What he is is an architect who wants to design interesting buildings that use green energy. He’s come to work at his family’s firm and now has the assignment to design a building where there is a series of small businesses for a conservative-minded businessman who isn’t interested in anything besides a functional box. For a billionaire business, the three Maxfield brothers seem to be extraordinarily dependent on getting this contract. That was never made clear why that was, but maybe it was clarified in the earlier books.

Nathan is falling for Carolina, the sister of the wife of his brother. She is working managing her mother’s Mexican restaurant which just happens to be one of the businesses to lose its spot where Nathan’s new project will go up.

Carolina has been married three times and has three small children. And her mother is a pain who resists any changes she wants to make in the restaurant and seems unreasonably hostile which she seems to take with more equanimity than I would have.

Carolina and Nathan fall for each other. There are lots of complications from their families and businesses and romantic histories. Don’t be surprised that they are able to fight through those complications to find their HEA. Maybe I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd read the first two so I could keep the other family members straight, but without that background, the book was just mildly entertaining and occasionally irritating. I received an ARC of this book, from the publisher, via NetGallery, in exchange for a fair and honest review