Normally I enjoy a strong focus on the hero and heroine. While Kate Walker’s The Konstantos Marriage Demand definitely delivered in this regard, I didn’t like either the hero or heroine, and saw no real evidence that they were in love.

The wealthy Carteret and Konstantos families have a long history of trying to destroy each other, with Sadie Carteret and Nikos Konstantos just the latest victims. Five years earlier, Sadie was on the verge of marrying Nikos when everything fell apart. Believing that Nikos was using her to get at her family’s money, she jilted him at the last moment. Since that time, Sadie’s father took everything from the Konstantos, and in turn, the Konstantos took everything from the Carterets. Confused? Just think of them as over-the-top wealthy families who periodically destroy each other.

Sadie’s father is now dead, and she’s trying to keep their family home – a really posh place in London now owned by Nikos – for her mother and young brother. Sadie doesn’t earn enough as a wedding planner to maintain the place, so out of desperation and using a fake name she makes an appointment with Nikos to beg him for help. Once Nikos gets over the shock of seeing Sadie, he agrees to let her family stay in their home, provided Sadie plans his upcoming wedding in Greece.

Once she agrees, Nikos demands that Sadie leave with him for Greece the next day, takes her cell phone and laptop away from her, and only allows her to communicate with her family once a day under his supervision. Oh, and she’s not allowed to meet his bride. Yes, this makes for a very appealing hero.

For most of the book, Sadie and Nikos wallow in their hurt and resentment from five years earlier. Neither trusts the other and neither seems to like the other, but they’re both still physically attracted. We spend a lot of time in Sadie’s head as she thinks about how much she dislikes Nikos and berates herself for still being attracted to him.

Until the last few pages, no other characters made an appearance, except for a few brief phone calls. Now this can work when the hero and heroine are particularly captivating. Unfortunately, there’s so little character development, that spending so much time with Sadie and Nikos was painful. I desperately wanted an interesting secondary character or two to pop in and turn the focus away from Sadie and Nikos.

I found myself reading a few pages, and then putting the book down for days at a time. About the only thing I enjoyed were a few descriptions of Athens. Other than that, reading the book was sheer drudgery.