Welcome to the Windsor Family
Alright my fellow spicy book dragons, where are my contemporary and billionaire romance lovers at? Because if arranged marriages, billionaire siblings, forced proximity, messy family drama, secret feelings, and contracts with some absolutely brutal consequences sound like your kind of romance, let me introduce you to Catharina Maura's The Windsors series.
ο»Ώο»Ώο»Ώο»ΏThere are six Windsor siblings, and throughout the series we get to watch each of them find their happily ever after. There's just one little complication. Grandma Anne controls their love lives. The Windsor family matriarch has a long-standing tradition of arranging marriages for members of the family, sometimes for business and sometimes for more personal reasons. And Grandma Anne does not play around.
The Windsor Marriage Rules
Every arranged marriage comes with a contract, and there are five major stipulations:
- The couple cannot spend more than three consecutive nights apart.
- When they're together, they must share a bed. No separate bedrooms and no living separate lives.
- They must remain married for three years. After three years they can divorce without penalty if the marriage truly hasn't worked, although there has never been a Windsor divorce
- They must remain faithful. Cheating means losing everything.
- They must genuinely try to make the marriage work. No clinging to their previous lives while simply waiting out the contract.
Complete the three years and Grandma Anne signs over whatever was promised in the contract, including the Windsor family member's inheritance. Break the agreement?
You lose everything.
Nothing like a little financial ruin to encourage marital bliss. And our first victim, I mean Windsor sibling, is Ares.
Meet the Characters
Raven Du Pont: The youngest Du Pont daughter, a successful supermodel, fashion designer, and business owner. Raven is kind, intelligent, caring, funny, witty, and relatively easygoing, but her family has spent most of her life making her feel second best to her older sister. The circumstances surrounding Raven's birth make that treatment even more heartbreaking. And to make everything worse, Raven has secretly been in love with her sister's fiancΓ© since she was a teenager.
Ares Windsor: The eldest Windsor sibling and billionaire head of the family's media empire. Ares is intelligent, caring, fiercely loyal, protective, and definitely has some touch her and die energy when it comes to Raven. He's supposed to marry Hannah Du Pont, but his feelings toward Raven are far more complicated than anyone realizes.
Basically, this marriage is already a disaster waiting to happen. I couldn't wait.
She Was Always Supposed to Be His Bride
Here's where things get interesting. The marriage arrangement between the Windsor and Du Pont families wasn't originally supposed to be between Ares and Hannah.
It was supposed to be Raven and Ares.
The Du Pont family wanted to ensure their business and daughters would be taken care of, while the Windsor family would provide assistance through a business merger and marriage.
Then one drunken night changed everything. The next morning, Ares announced he was dating Hannah and asked to marry her instead. Grandma Anne agreed. Raven was left heartbroken.
Five years later, Ares and Hannah are finally supposed to get married after Hannah has repeatedly postponed their wedding. Then Hannah backs out. Again. Grandma Anne has officially had enough of everyone's shit. And just like that, the original arrangement is back on the table.
Ares is marrying Raven.
The Wrong Bride or the Right One All Along?
Neither Raven nor Ares initially wants to go through with the marriage under these circumstances. They plead with Grandma Anne to reconsider. She does not. And considering what's at stake if either refuses, they don't exactly have many options. So Raven marries the man she's secretly loved for years.
Her sister's fiancΓ©. What could possibly go wrong? Approximately everything. Their marriage starts rocky, especially because Raven refuses to simply become a placeholder until Hannah decides she wants Ares again.
And Hannah? Oh, my fellow spicy book dragons.
This woman pissed me off.
As soon as she discovers Raven and Ares actually went through with the wedding, suddenly she's back and acting like everyone else betrayed her. She seems convinced Raven and Ares can simply remain married for three years, divorce, and then everything will magically return to normal.
Ma'am. You abandoned your wedding. Please take several seats.
Raven Refuses to Be Second Choice
One of my favorite things about Raven was watching her stand up for herself. She has spent years being pushed into Hannah's shadow, and being married to Ares doesn't suddenly erase all of that insecurity and hurt. Raven loves him. But she also knows she deserves respect. There are multiple times throughout the book when she has to put Ares in his place and remind him exactly what their marriage means now. I loved those moments. She doesn't want a husband who spends their entire marriage waiting for her sister. If they're going to do this, they're going to actually do it. And eventually, Ares starts realizing the same thing.
Hannah, Kindly Get the Fuck Out
Unfortunately, Hannah isn't interested in making their marriage easy. She continually inserts herself into Raven and Ares's relationship, creates doubt, crosses boundaries, and seems determined to remind Raven that she was supposedly the woman Ares wanted first. Add Raven's mother to the situation and we have two professional shit stirrers constantly making Raven feel inferior.
The deeper we get into the story, though, the more Ares begins establishing boundaries. And eventually? Enough is enough. Watching Ares finally put Hannah in her place and protect his marriage was extremely satisfying. Because Raven has spent enough of her life feeling like someone's second choice.
The Little Things Made Their Romance
For all the drama surrounding their marriage, I really enjoyed the quieter moments between Raven and Ares. Ares doesn't just tell Raven he cares. He starts showing her.
They remodel the house together so it feels like their home, rather than somewhere Raven has simply been dropped into after the wedding. Then there's Raven's birthday gift. And her wedding rings. Ares has a custom wedding ring set created based on Raven's own design and crafted by the world-renowned jeweler Laurier.
The significance becomes even better considering Hannah had wanted Laurier rings herself and Ares had refused. Sir. Message received.
Those smaller details helped sell their developing relationship for me because you're watching Raven slowly gain a place in Ares's life that belongs specifically to her.
Sierra and Raven Are Chaos Together
The Windsor family relationships were another huge highlight. Especially Sierra and Raven. These two bicker like actual sisters. And apparently Grandma Anne's homemade cookies are worth going to war over.
At one point Sierra calls Raven a "Grandma-stealing little bitch" with all the love in her heart.
Then they start fighting over cookies. Ares films them. Raven tries to steal his phone. Next thing you know she's climbing this man like a tree and he's pinning her against the wall. You know. Normal family activities. Then Sierra decides another time that sharing is overrated and dumps the entire plate of cookies into her purse so Raven can't have any. I loved it.
The Windsor brothers having their monthly poker nights was another little detail I enjoyed because it establishes their sibling relationships before we move into everyone else's books.
Silas and Alanna Deserve a Mention
Then we have Raven's friends Silas and Alanna. I loved these two. Silas gives absolutely no fucks and takes shit from basically no one, unless we're talking about Alanna. And Alanna? Slightly feral. Slightly unhinged. My kind of character.
One of my favorite moments comes when Ares is trying to get Raven back and Silas sees exactly how badly he's losing it. Silas essentially points out that he's watched Ares handle incredibly dangerous situations without panicking, yet Raven disappears for ten minutes and the man's entire world falls apart.
Well, Ares. I think somebody might be in love.
The Secrets Are MESSY
The deeper Raven and Ares get into their marriage, the more secrets start coming out. And there are a lot of them. There are revelations about Raven's family and why she avoided staying at her parents' house while Ares and Hannah were together.
There are things Ares hasn't told Raven. There are questions surrounding that drunken night years ago that changed the original marriage arrangement. Then someone ends up pregnant. And suddenly we have a very important question:
Who's the father?
I won't spoil all the answers because uncovering what actually happened is part of what makes this book so addictive. But the family drama? Messy. The secrets? Messier. Exactly what I want from this kind of billionaire romance.
The Verdict
Highly Recommended For: Billionaire romance lovers, arranged marriage fans, forced proximity, marriage of convenience, sister drama, secretly-in-love characters, touch her and die MMCs, complicated families, strong FMCs, jealousy, angst, family secrets, spice, and interconnected romance series.
The Wrong Bride was a great introduction to The Windsors. I really enjoyed Raven and Ares together, especially once their marriage stopped feeling like something being forced on them and became something they were both willing to fight for. Raven has spent so much of her life being treated like she's less important than Hannah that watching her finally demand the love and respect she deserves was incredibly satisfying.
And Ares? The man definitely makes mistakes, but watching him realize exactly what Raven means to him, start establishing boundaries, and fight for their marriage made their relationship work for me.
The Windsor family itself might have been my other favorite part. Between Grandma Anne orchestrating marriages, Sierra fighting Raven over cookies, the brothers' poker nights, and the glimpses we get of the other siblings, I was already invested in seeing each Windsor meet their match.
Then Catharina Maura drops that ending on us and gives a glimpse of the next couple. Excuse me?! I guess Grandma Anne isn't finished meddling yet. And after finishing The Wrong Bride, neither am I.
If you end up loving Silas and Alanna and want more of them, they also connect to Catharina Maura's Off-Limits series, along with some of the other characters mentioned throughout this world. Also there is a reading order to all the books if you prefer to read them in full order. It starts with a stand alone called Forever After All, then the Off-Limits series, then the Windsors series, and another stand alone called Mine For A Moment.
All in all, The Wrong Bride gave me exactly what I wanted from the beginning of an interconnected billionaire romance series: drama, spice, family chaos, secrets, romance, an FMC I wanted to see finally put herself first, and enough teasing about the other Windsor siblings to make me want to immediately pick up book two.
Happy reading, and remember my fellow spicy book dragons, before starting a book please check the tropes, and always check for trigger warnings. Nobody likes an unfinished book because the tropes aren't your cup of tea or having a bad reading experience because of unexpected trigger warnings.
