What do you do when a book makes you feel guilty and turned on at the same time?
Because that's basically the emotional tug-of-war I lived in for eight hours while finishing this at 2 AM on a Tuesday, Frida curled on my chest like a furry little chaperone, Diego perched on the windowsill giving me his most judgmental stare. And honestly? Diego was right to judge me on this one.
The Rabbit Hole Has a British Accent and Zero Chill
Let me get the elephant in the room out of the way: the infidelity. Sophie has a boyfriend. A bland, safe, wallpaper-paste boyfriend named Dan, but still - a boyfriend. And the book doesn't shy away from the fact that what's happening between her and Lucien Knight is a betrayal. Some people will bounce off this hard, and I get it. I almost did. But Kitty French does this thing where she makes Sophie's vanilla life feel so suffocating, so small, that by the time Lucien shows up with his damaged Norwegian backstory and his adult entertainment empire, you're basically begging Sophie to blow up her own life. Which is... morally complicated? And kind of the point?
The setup is pure telenovela energy - Abuela would have been clutching her rosary AND leaning closer to the speaker, let's be real. Gorgeous, emotionally unavailable CEO hires girl-next-door PA, introduces her to a world of pleasure she didn't know existed. You've seen this framework before. But French writes the sexual tension with this fizzy, almost playful voice that keeps it from feeling like a carbon copy of every other billionaire-dom romance. Dark Carousel works that same familiar power-imbalance scaffold and still managed to surprise me — though I'll say it leaned harder into the darkness than the fizz. The food metaphors get a little much (there's a whole extended dessert analogy that made me snort-laugh rather than swoon), but the actual scenes between Lucien and Sophie have genuine heat.
Claire Wexford Made Me Work For It - Then Rewarded Me
Okay, Claire Wexford's narration. Here's my honest experience: for the first 30-ish minutes, I was distracted. Her British accent is proper and clipped, and my brain kept trying to reconcile this very posh delivery with content that is decidedly NOT posh. It felt like having your most elegant aunt read you erotica. Disorienting.
But then something clicked. By the time Sophie starts actually working at Knight Inc., Wexford's voice settled into this rhythm where her controlled, almost restrained delivery made the explicit moments land harder. Like - the contrast between her composed tone and what she's describing creates this tension that a breathier, more obviously "sexy" narrator wouldn't have achieved. Her Lucien voice has this low, commanding quality that's distinct enough from Sophie's without going cartoonish. The POV shifts between them feel natural, not jarring.
She's not Julia Whelan. Nobody is Julia Whelan. But Wexford brings something unexpected to this - a kind of dignified sensuality? If that makes sense? It grew on me in a big way.
My Heart Wanted More Than My Body Got
Here's where I have to be real: I wanted to feel MORE. The spice is there - very much there, detailed and creative and honestly pretty hot. But the emotional depth? It stays at the surface. Lucien's backstory in Norway gets hinted at like a shadow behind frosted glass, and you never quite get to press your face against it and see clearly. I kept waiting for that gut-punch moment, that chapter where I'd have to pause and stare at the ceiling and process. It never came.
I cried zero times. ZERO. For me, that's practically a failed experiment. The last time I got this close to a book promising emotional devastation and walked away dry-eyed, it was Prince of Wolves — same heat, same surface tension, same nagging sense that the gut-punch was being saved for a sequel that may or may not deliver.
And then the ending just... stops. Like mid-conversation stops. It's book one of a trilogy, so I get it, but there's "cliffhanger" and there's "did my file corrupt?" This felt closer to the second. I literally checked my phone to make sure the download was complete.
Sophie is likeable enough - she's got a best friend named Kara who provides the kind of ride-or-die energy every romance heroine deserves - but she stays reactive for most of the book. Things happen TO Sophie. Lucien orchestrates, Sophie responds. I wanted her to grab the wheel at some point, and she just... doesn't. Not yet, anyway.
Who Gets an Invitation to the Knight Club
If you want steamy escapism with a British polish, this delivers. If you're cool with infidelity as a plot device and you're committed to the trilogy (because this book alone will leave you hanging), grab it for a long design session or a solo evening where you want to feel a little scandalous. This is a rainy Sunday book - but the kind of rainy Sunday where you're restless and looking for trouble, not the cozy blanket kind.
Skip it if you need emotional devastation with your romance. Skip it if cheating is a hard no. And definitely skip if you need a complete story arc - this is a setup book through and through.
The Client Brief
Fun, frothy, unapologetically sexy. Like expensive champagne that doesn't quite have the depth of a good mezcal. I enjoyed the ride but I didn't feel changed by it, and for me, that's always the difference between a good listen and a great one. I'll probably pick up book two - Wexford's voice is still in my head, and I want to know what's behind Lucien's ice. But my crying spreadsheet remains untouched, and that says everything.
