I enjoy a strong female main character. Drives me batty when FMCs are portrayed as weak or less intelligent than the MMC. Of course it's also frustrating when the female is also always poor and in need of rescuing. I like that this FMC earned her own income through her own hard work, intelligence and perseverance. She refused to be a trophy girlfriend or just arm candy.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
🌶️🌶️🌶️

When Hearts Ignite is the first book in the Orchid series by Victoria Lum. This continues with the Orchid club introduced in her previous series.

Steven Kingsly is a billionaire, Wall Street genius who has no interest in love. However, he was not prepared for the smart intern, Grace, who showed up hours early every day to work where they slowly built a friendship. She needs to land one of the few jobs at his company to help take care of her mother’s debts and her sister’s ballet school. Things do not turn out the way she needed, and she is forced to do a different type of job and disappears from Steven’s life. When Steven runs into her at the Orchid, he can not let her go and pursues her hard.

Let me tell you, I loved Steven Kinglsey! I always love a hero who doesn’t want or believe in love, yet they always fall hard. Steven was so swoon-worthy and treated Grace like a queen. He recognized her intelligence and beauty from the inside out. Grace did not want to be like her mother, who was in love with being in love and always had her heart broken, but once she lets down her walls, these two have a beautiful connection. There is a plot twist that I saw coming, even though the reveal is supposed to be a shock, but I didn’t mind it. The way the characters came together after this reveal was beautiful, and I appreciated the communication.

These two were so hot together, and I loved Steven’s dirty mouth. The spice was amazing due to their emotional connection and slow burn. I also loved that they started out as friends and how Steven never tried anything with her when she was his intern. 

This is only my second Victoria Lum book, but I absolutely love her writing style. She writes beautifully and sucks you into the story. I enjoy a character driven story, and she writes the perfect book boyfriends. I am very excited to read Ryland’s book next, especially since it is a teacher/student romance.

Thank you to Literally Yours PR and the author for providing the ARC.

May contain spoilers:

I really enjoyed this book. I think it was first slow burn type of book which took some getting used to. But I loved everything about this. 

The characters were amazing. I loved Steven and Grace. They definitely had quite a few obstacles to get through to be together. But I loved that they continued to fight for their relationship despite the many obstacles. And the fact it took awhile for them to get together made the moment they did that much better.

The boss/employee relationship in this book was different from any other boss/employee book I've read before. Grace and Steven never actually got together while Grace worked for him. Which I found refreshing. While they worked together again towards the end, Grace had technically been working for herself at that point and not as an employee of the company or Steven. Which eliminated that ethical boundary and power imbalance that would have been there in the beginning of the book. 

I did get quite emotional towards the end of this book when Steven and Grace worried they wouldn't be able to be together anymore after what Steven's mom told him. And I actually cried when Steven's Dad revealed the truth of what happened when Steven and Grace were kids. 

I loved the interaction Grace had with her father in the end. While it made me sad reading it and the circumstances behind her father not being in her and her sister's life, I was happy to see the start of them getting to know each other. 

So in all, I loved this book and would highly recommend. I'm excited to get into the second book. With how this book ended and set up for the second book. I feel like the second one is gonna be very interesting.

I think this was good, and had some really great elements to it. Steven and Grace were so good together, and I loved just how much they cared for each other. Steven is a billionaire, but he wasn't the typical rich guy we often read about in romance. Both he and Grace have had a tough life and it was so lovely to see them come together and find love with each other. What threw me off, and quite frankly grossed me out, was the PLOT TWIST! You know the one... and if you don't, look up spoilers for it because it's WILD and I think it was totally unnecessary. Like, anything else could have happened but that was just... not good. Anyways, other than that, I really enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to the next one.