Whatever rating system you might use to rank book reads, INDECENT PROPOSAL by Molly O'Keefe will blow it right out of the water. O'Keefe is one of my auto-buy authors, and once again, with this book, she excels! Indecent Proposal brings together two lonely, pained individuals, puts them in an untenable relationship, and has them come out the other side in a solid and loving partnership. But the path to get there is filled with anguish and soul searching, and whew, what a ride!

Ryan is bartending in Manhattan when she hooks up for a night of hot stranger sex. The condom fails, and she learns that the man who got her pregnant is Harrison Montgomery, a legacy politician poised to become a congressman. Harrison is horrified by the impending scandal of Ryan's pregnancy, and proposes to marry her for 2 years in order to contain the political fallout. If she doesn't agree, Harrison tells the now-unemployed Ryan, her life and her family's life will be ruined by the sex scandal.

Ryan grew up feeling like a prop for his father's political campaigns and his mother's aspirations. His father was embroiled in a sex scandal and "appropriately going down with the sinking boat of corruption and scandal that had been his life's work." Ryan is pathologically driven to become a pure and honest politician to redeem his family's name from ignominy.

Ryan married her sister's boyfriend, then he beat her and stole her father's savings. Her family won't speak to her, and she's got no one. Both Harrison and Ryan have so much emotional baggage that it is sometimes squirmingly uncomfortable to read about them trying to figure out how to live together in this fake marriage and make it look real, while protecting their hearts. The aching depths of their desire for love twanged my heartstrings over and over. It wasn't just the contract they signed that made her worry. What would they do tomorrow? How would she pay in days to come for taking what she wanted right now?

Molly O'Keefe is a master at showing love and personal growth in all its messy glory, and the catharsis of Harrison and Ryan finally reaching true love was such a relief after how invested I became in watching them struggle to become happy.

I can't wait to see what O'Keefe offers next.