This review contains spoilers for Gambler.
In an exclusive and illegal card game, Jack wins a penthouse -- and Leo Monahan's daughter for a year. Initially taken as a joke, Jack soon finds out that this man is not joking, and Jack finds himself with a beach-front penthouse and a blonde woman in his bed. Jack is on some time of secret mission involving Leo and his business, and if he has to accept his daughter, Cassandra, for a year to get the job done, he will certainly do it.
Over half-way through the book, and Jack and Cassandra have had approximately four actual conversations with each other, and we have spent a huge chunk of time only learning Jack's backstory and involvement in the security business.
At this point in the book, the only thing that we know about Cassandra is who her father is and that she is the one that is supposed to run his business one day, so she needs to shadow Jack at his business in order to learn something. There is in fact absolutely no mentoring done by Jack in this book, if you do not count him helping Cassandra try to launch her art consultant career behind her father's back.
However, that takes a quick turn as Cassandra and Jack find themselves in a fake-relationship situation in order to keep up appearances so Jack's old acquaintance, Walker, does not get suspicious of why they know each other. We really only get to see their tension in the second half of the book, with actual development finally at the very end. With this book being from both of their perspectives, you see the conflict that both of them have once they enter their little relationship agreement.
The plot moves very slow in the first 100 pages of the book, and it felt as though the author was dragging out background that could have been glossed over, or realized that she wrote so much background that she decided to try to wrap up the book very quickly. With the book being so short that it basically qualifies as a novella, I should not have been surprised with how little we had of Jack and Cassandra actually interacting with each other.
We are left on a cliffhanger as Jack comes back to the penthouse after being beaten by a bunch of Leo's goons and he reveals to Cassandra that he is working undercover for the FBI -- total shocker. He spent the entire book running around making secret calls on burner phones and meeting with people that it was obvious he was up to something, but as a reader we did not know if he was worse than Leo or better.
I honestly was not sure if I wanted to continue on with this series, but based off of the ending and how short this book was, I might just have to keep on reading solely so that I can have closure on Jack and Cassandra. If you are looking for a quick, slow-burn, and fake-dating book with a dash of mafia-type undertones, this may be the series for you.
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