For 100 Days

For 100 Days is the first book in Lara Adrian’s 100 Series, a contemporary erotic romance trilogy she released starting in 2016 outside her main paranormal Midnight Breed work. The shift to contemporary territory was a deliberate move for Adrian, and the 100 Series found its own audience among readers who had liked the heat of her vampire books but wanted to read about people who lived in the present day rather than ancient warrior orders.

The premise is built on a deal. Avery Ross is a young woman trying to rebuild her life after losing almost everything. Nick Dominic is a wealthy and powerful man with reasons of his own for proposing an arrangement that runs for one hundred days and asks Avery to surrender control inside those boundaries in exchange for the financial stability she desperately needs. The setup invites obvious comparisons to other contemporary erotica that uses the wealthy dominant hero, but Adrian had been writing alpha males with secrets for years and she handles the dynamic with experience.

What distinguishes the 100 Series from some of its peers is Adrian’s plotting discipline. There is a real mystery underneath the romance, and Nick’s reasons for the arrangement turn out to be more complicated than the early chapters suggest. The book ends on a hook that pulls readers into the second volume, For 100 Nights, and the trilogy continues from there.

Readers who enjoy contemporary erotic romance with a thriller undercurrent, like the work of Sylvia Day, Maya Banks, or Lisa Renee Jones, will find familiar territory here. The heat level is high, the emotional stakes get serious by the middle of the book, and Adrian’s pacing is reliable. For 100 Days is a strong opening to the trilogy.