Keep Me by Sara Cate

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶

Blurb:

Their marriage of convenience is anything but…

All Killian Barclay wants is to be left the hell alone. He's had enough heartache to last a lifetime, and he has no more need for love—earning him the reputation of a broody Scot and eventually turning his famous ancestral home into a den of iniquity. It doesn't take long for tales of his raunchy house parties to reach the rest of his family, though, inspiring them to hatch a plan to shake Killian out of his routine.

New Yorker Sylvie Devereaux is tough as nails—as the daughter of famous yet neglectful parents, she's grown a hard shell and keeps everyone at arm's length. So when she sneaks into Barclay Manor during a trip to Scotland to get a glimpse of a famous heirloom, she doesn't anticipate facing off against the brutish, maddening Highlander who lives there. And she certainly didn't expect to ever see the bastard again.

Yet just weeks later, she's approached by Killian's family with a proposal—move to Scotland and marry Killian to improve his playboy reputation, and after one year, she'll walk away with ten million dollars. Sylvie agrees, even knowing that their plan is more deceptive than he realizes. But as she grows closer to Killian and the end of their year together, she has to Is the love of a good man with a dark soul worth keeping, or is she willing to break Killian's heart now that it's well and truly hers?

My Review:

HA! I absolutely devoured this book. Like, consumed it, obsessed over it, thought about it long after I finished. Because tell me… what’s not to love about a broody Scottish man battling severe anxiety? I’m not even going to pretend to be chill about it, I was down bad. Completely gone. Every complicated, messy, kink-laced inch of him had me hooked.

And listen… I thought I had limits. I thought I knew where my boundaries were when it came to jealousy and possessiveness, but this book? It pushed right up against them in the best way. A little tension, a little “mine but not quite”? Yeah… it did something to me.

The FMC is chaotic no doubt about it but I got her. Deeply. She’s messy because she’s hurting, masking trauma with humor and impulsiveness, and honestly? With parents like hers, who wouldn’t be a little unhinged? They were truly awful. The kind of awful that makes your skin crawl.

Now, fair warning: this book comes with heavy triggers. It doesn’t shy away from trauma or the messy, uncomfortable work of healing. If you’re not in the space for that, this might not be your read. But if you are? It hits hard. The kind of story that makes you pause, reflect, and maybe even see pieces of yourself in places you didn’t expect.

And the setup? Delicious chaos. The book kicks off with the FMC in Scotland with her painfully forgettable boyfriend (seriously, I couldn’t tell you his name if I tried, he’s that irrelevant). She breaks into a house, yes, breaks in to snap a photo of a typewriter tied to his family. Already unhinged behavior, and I was here for it.

But that’s where she meets him. The MMC. And from that moment on? It’s a whirlwind.

We get fake marriage, tension so thick you could cut it, and a relationship built on irritation, lust, and undeniable pull. Throw in a crumbling old manor, scandalous parties, and a deeply fractured family that has no idea how to love each other properly and it’s pure chaos in the best way.

This book is messy, intense, uncomfortable, and addictive as hell.

And honestly? It was perfect.