Tina Chen just wants a degree and a job, so her parents never have to worry about making rent again. She has no time for Blake Reynolds, the sexy billionaire who stands to inherit Cyclone Systems. But when he makes an offhand comment about what it means to be poor, she loses her cool and tells him he couldn’t last a month living her life.To her shock, Blake offers her a trade: She’ll get his … get his income, his house, his car. In exchange, he’ll work her hours and send money home to her family. No expectations; no future obligations.
But before long, they’re trading not just lives, but secrets, kisses, and heated nights together. No expectations might break Tina’s heart…but Blake’s secrets could ruin her life.
Trade Me is the first book in the Cyclone series.
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This is the best romance novel I have read in years. It is definitely on my top ten list of must-read romances that I have read.
Blake is a model for what a modern romantic hero should be. He’s amazing. I love that he has a genuine and complex interior life of his own, one that includes legitimate and difficult problems. I love that he listens to Tina, cares about and validates her emotions, doesn’t try to push her into things she doesn’t feel ready for, and asks her what she needs and how he can provide it.
Tina. Oh, Tina. I feel Tina so hard. Down to the bottom of my soul. I love her vulnerability, her guilt, her fear, her stark and shining independence. I love that she tries so hard and fears so much. I love that she sees Blake, really genuinely sees him, and likes him the better for it.
I like the interaction between Blake and his dad, and I love the interaction between Tina and Blake’s dad and Tina and Tina’s mom.
This book is about family. About identity. About stress and fear. About love.
And it is beautifully written. So many of the lines have a stark and striking truth. The book borders on a love poem to the modern romance novel as a genre.
I didn’t love it as much I was expecting to. I did enjoy that this covered serious topics and had a diverse cast. However, the characters didn’t stand out to me and I was just wanting more from the story.
Trade Me, by Courtney Milan, is one of my favorite books of the last several years.
It’s a contemporary genre romance about an impoverished college student who tells her billionaire classmate ‘if we traded places, you wouldn’t last two weeks in my position’, and he takes her up on it.
…
The above sentence is technically true. It is similar to the description of this book on Amazon. It is the description that made me decide to pass on reading it originally because: meh, contemporary. Meh, billlionaires. Meh, unbelievable meetcute.
But then MCA Hogarth recommended it, and I decided to give it a try.
And that summary is true, and it is such bullshit.
This is a story about a man who uses the Imperial March as the ringtone for the father that he loves, for the dad who loves him, who’s always been there for him, who is his best friend, because even so he is That Kind of dad.
It is about a woman who, when she has $50 to get her through the next nine days, sends $30 of it to her mother to help her little sister, and her mother who gives it to an immigrant who’s fighting to avoid deportation. And that sounds maudlin and self-sacrificing but it’s not: it is love tied up with resentment and raw terror and more love. With “you have to do this, but you can’t, but you have to, so you find a way to even though it’s destroying you.”
It is about self-abnegation, about self-obliteration. It is about loving parents who are doing their best, whose kids adore them — and the way these same parents are asking so much that is destroying those kids. It’s about college students in love, and they feel like real college students, and they are adults but they are still so young, too young, for all those expectations that weigh them down.
It is a ridiculous meetcute with a ridiculous premise and yet somehow it rings with so much truth. It is very rare for a book about a billionaire and an impoverished person to convey either what it’s truly like to be poor or what it’s truly like to be wealthy, but this does both. There is nothing superficial about the portrayal of money or its lack in this book. And every character in the story is raw and real. There is no brutality in this book: no screaming, no violence, no hatred, no villains. But it is brutal nonetheless. Even more brutal because there are no villains, because no one is being unreasonable and yet they are all asking too much. They need too much. People are broken, and even billionaires with the best will in the world cannot fix that.
There’s so much honesty in this story that when I got to the end, the happily-ever-after that every genre romance has, it was like driving a car into a wall at 50mph. The book stopped but I kept going. The reasons that kept the characters apart for so long were all still there, and yes, I was glad they were going to try instead of giving up, but I can’t believe in the happily-ever-after. I need to know that they’re going to be okay, and I don’t think they are. I don’t know how they can be.
Trade Me is a romance, and it has the things I expect of a romance: sensuality and attraction and love and the characters who think about Their Relationship and the stupid things that keep them apart. Except they’re not stupid things. They’re real. Terrifyingly real.
It is all of this, but far, far more. It transcends.
It is magnificent.
And harrowing, and heartbreaking, and I don’t know what to say about it even though I’ve been talking about it for a page and a half already. It is not a great romance (I hit that wall at the end, Ms. Milan, and it hurts, oh lord, it hurts) but it is an amazing book.
The book that hooked me on the New Adult genre! I knew Milan’s work through her historicals and took a gamble on this contemporary several years ago — little did I know then how much it would stick with me! Milan creates believable college-age characters who make an unlikely connection. There’s an interesting plot and a dual POV narrative with two distinct voices. Yes, the billionaire thing is overdone but Blake is a great character–a thoughtful, complicated guy who is under intense pressure to please. Tina is likewise complicated and under pressure and the dynamics of how they help each other are plausible and moving. As a plot device the idea of their temporary trading lives is a fun one and the tech world they inhabit is credible and fresh. I go back to this one over and over, both as a reader and as a writer trying to figure out how she does it!
I give this book 4.25 stars. Ms. Milan is an excellent writer who spins can-not-put-down stories.
When I read a book where the sex is a natural outcome from the emotions, it’s makes me ache. The funny thing is, I don’t ache where you *think* I might be aching; I ache in my hands, the back of my hands to be exact. This book had me SO achey. The push-pull between these characters and their desires vs. fears, was very well done, and the payoff was HOT.
Also, Ms. Milan has some laugh-out-loud funny lines as well as some wonderful “awwww” moments.
I loved it, read it in three sittings, and really liked the parent characters…they were perhaps my favorite people in the book.
Having read a bit of Ms. Milan’s historical romance, I do feel that this book could be as good as those with a bit more polish. For instance, I thought Maria’s “secret” went on a bit too long. I actually got frustrated because I kept thinking “I think she’s XXX, but there was only that single mention…”, the only other clue was height. It was distracting enough that it pulled me out of the story. I also wanted Mabel’s illness to be specified. The idea of skipping medication sounded serious and not serious at the same time, which confused me. I only say these things to point out how small the fixes would need to be to make this a 5-star book, because the story is that good.
Unlike some other reviewers, I love her agenda, her “stereotypes” are grounded in reality (I personally know a couple JUST like Tina’s parents), and I love the diversity. I also love her strong woman and kind hero set-up. I look forward to reading more contemporary books from Ms. Milan.