This Man

I came to This Man after hearing it mentioned alongside the early 2010s wave of British romance that followed Fifty Shades of Grey. I expected something familiar and fast. A rich man, a plain girl, a lot of bedroom scenes. The first fifty pages gave me exactly that fear. Then Ava kept making me pause. She is stubborn in a quiet way, and Jesse is stranger than the usual billionaire stand in. I read the Forever edition slowly over four evenings, marking places where I wanted to argue with both of them. A friend had told me the sequels get darker, so I paid close attention to how this first book sets their pattern.

The book follows Ava O Shea, twenty six, an interior designer living in London. She shares a flat with her close friend Kate and stays close to her brother Dan and her parents back home. Work matters to Ava. She loves rooms that feel lived in, fabric samples, old wood, soft light. She is not looking for a man and is fine being single while she builds her career at a small design firm.

A publishing note helps place the copy discussed here. This Man first appeared in 2012 as a self published trilogy opener in Britain, then Grand Central Publishing reissued it in the United States under its Forever imprint in 2013. The record for this post cites that Forever edition of 480 pages. The year 2013 refers to that American print release. The prose is plain and present tense for long stretches, with Ava narrating everything as it happens.

Ava O Shea Starts Over in London

Ava works for a London design practice run by a man named Matt. The office is small, busy, a little chaotic. Phones ring, drawings pile up, clients change their minds about paint at the last minute. Ava is good at calming people down. She listens, sketches, finds a lamp that ties a scheme together. She wants to be taken seriously as a designer, not as the junior who makes tea. Matt trusts her eye for color but still hands the big pitches to senior staff, which leaves Ava hungry to prove herself on a large job.

Her flat life gives the early chapters warmth. Kate is loud, loyal, funny, always pushing Ava to go out. Sam, Kate boyfriend, drifts in and out with food and jokes. Dan calls with brotherly teasing. Ava runs in the park when she needs air. These scenes feel real to me, with rent talk and friends borrowing shoes.

Work sends Ava out of that comfort. Matt assigns her to a large country hotel project called The Manor House. The client wants reception rooms and suites refreshed without losing the old character. Ava prepares boards and budgets and drives out with nerves. She checks her measurements twice and rehearses how to explain her choices. She expects a manager in a suit. She does not expect the owner to take a personal interest in soft furnishings. The drive back to London feels long because she replays every awkward minute.

I liked this setup. The job moves the plot, since site visits force them together and deadlines force Ava to stand firm.

Meeting Jesse Ward at The Manor House

Jesse Ward owns The Manor House. He is in his late thirties, tall, fit, famous for getting what he wants. Staff step aside when he walks through. He runs several businesses, lives between a vast house near the hotel and a London penthouse, drives fast cars, drinks a great deal. From the first meeting he stares at Ava in a way that makes her drop her folder. He asks her name twice, as if testing how it sounds.

Their first proper talk happens in a bar area of the hotel. Ava tries to stay professional. She opens her portfolio and talks through fabric and light. Jesse barely looks at the boards. He asks where she lives, whether she has a boyfriend, what she does on weekends. Ava answers too much, then catches herself and closes the folder. She tries to leave with her bag tangled on the chair leg. He follows her to the car park and asks when he will see her again. She says she will send drawings by email. He says that will not do.

What follows is pursuit, plain and simple. Jesse calls the office until Matt gives in. He sends a driver to collect Ava. He appears at her flat uninvited with wine. Ava tells him no several times. She means it in the moment. Then he shows up again with a joke, and she laughs despite herself. I found these early chapters uneasy and compelling at once. Ava calls him arrogant to his face and tells Kate she feels hunted.

The physical pull is immediate. Ava notices his mouth, his hands, the way he fills a doorway. Jesse touches her often, a hand at the small of her back, fingers in her hair. Their first kiss happens after an argument, hard and sudden. Ava pulls back, angry at herself for responding.

Control, Rules and Constant Push Pull

Once they start an affair, Jesse sets terms. He wants Ava available at all hours. He wants her to answer her phone on the first ring. He wants her to spend nights at his place, first weekends, then weekdays too. He tells her what to wear to dinner. He moves her toothbrush into his bathroom without asking. He hates her flat, hates the lock on her door, hates Matt for keeping her late at work. He calls her Lady and expects obedience in bed and near obedience out of it. Friends warn her that each small yes makes the next no harder to say.

Ava agrees to some of this and fights the rest. She likes being wanted so completely after years of feeling average. She likes the luxury too, the penthouse views, the car waiting downstairs. But she keeps her job and her flat for much of the book. When Jesse throws her phone across the room during a row about a missed call, she leaves and stays away for days.

That push pull shapes the middle third. They separate, Jesse talks his way back, Ava returns, calm lasts a week, then a new row erupts. Often drink starts it. He can be tender at dinner and cold by midnight. He checks her call log and tells her she does not need to work now that she has him. Ava shouts back that design is hers.

Here is where fair criticism belongs. The power gap is wide and the book enjoys it. Jesse is older, richer, physically stronger, socially connected. Consent in intimate scenes is present, yet consent outside the bedroom gets thin. Showing up uninvited, taking her phone, deciding where she sleeps, these read as control even when Ava frames them as care. I struggled in places, especially when Ava forgives behavior that would end trust in real life.

The repetition also wears. So many scenes follow the same beat. Row, separation, grand gesture, reunion in bed, tender morning, row again. After the third cycle I started skimming arguments about unanswered texts. The plot stalls around the halfway mark. A tighter middle would have helped.

Still, I kept reading because Ava narrates with bite. She notices Jesse hangover breath and his panic when she packs a bag. She admits when she uses sex to end a fight. That honesty saved the long middle for me.

Jesse Past Wounds Begin to Show

Jesse past arrives in hints before it arrives in facts. He wakes from bad dreams sweating. He panics if she leaves bed without telling him. He drinks to sleep. He has a scarred relationship with his mother and stepfather, long silences and stiff visits. Staff adore him and fear him.

Ava pieces this together slowly. Jesse tells her his father died and his childhood shifted after. He speaks of feeling abandoned young. He admits to past heavy drinking and to using women for brief comfort. He cannot explain his rages except to say fear takes over when he thinks she will go.

Sarah appears as part of that history. She knew Jesse when he was wilder. Ava meets her and feels instant jealousy mixed with pity. The scenes with her are short but they rattle Ava badly. She starts sleeping poorly and checking Jesse phone when he showers, then hating herself for sinking to that.

I appreciated that Malpas does not give Jesse a single neat wound that explains all. His trouble feels built from neglect, grief, wealth without limits, drink, and years of being obeyed. At the same time, the book asks Ava to carry the cost of his healing. Friends tell her she cannot fix him. She tries anyway. I swung between seeing her patience as love and seeing it as self harm.

One detail stayed with me. Jesse cannot cope when Ava works late at The Manor House without him. He turns up and sulks because workmen look at her. It is sad and funny and tiring all at once.

Learning to Stay When Leaving Feels Easier

The later middle tests whether Ava will stay. She moves some clothes to his house after he begs. Living together exposes cracks. Jesse wants dinner at fixed times and wants to know her schedule hour by hour. Ava misses Kate and Sam and misses choosing dinner without discussion.

Small betrayals pile up. Jesse reads her messages. He turns up drunk at her office party and embarrasses her in front of Matt. He throws a glass during a fight about Sarah and then buys an expensive bracelet as apology. Ava throws the bracelet back. Kate tells her to end it. Ava agrees, packs, cries, then answers Jesse midnight call.

Why does she answer. Ava loves how Jesse sees her body, how he tells her she is beautiful when she has felt plain for years. She loves his rare softness, falling asleep with his head in her lap, remembering how she takes tea. She also fears he will fall apart if she leaves. That last reason troubled me most. Love mixed with fear keeps her in place.

Night buses, rain on windscreens, site tables, hangovers on Monday site meetings, mothers calling on Sundays. Ava remains a working woman in a real city even inside a fantasy romance. She checks her bank app. She worries about losing the hotel commission if the affair sours.

The bedroom scenes continue through this stretch, frequent and long. Consent is spoken, sometimes with humor. Ava stops scenes and Jesse stops when asked in bed, which matters given how little he listens outside it. Still, the frequency slows the story. I wished for fewer, sharper scenes.

Commitment on Jesse Terms

The final act moves toward commitment without smoothing Jesse into a safe partner. He proposes a version of forever that suits him. Move in fully. Marry him. Let him provide. He says he will cut drink, see someone for help, control his temper. He means it when he says it.

A crisis forces the choice. After a bad row linked to drink and jealousy, Ava leaves for her parents home to think. Jesse follows, waits outside, talks to her father with surprising humility. He admits he is difficult and asks for a chance to prove change through acts rather than gifts.

Back in London, Ava sets her own terms at last. She will live with Jesse but keep working on The Manor House and other jobs. She will keep her phone and her friends and her keys. She will not accept shouting, thrown objects, or silent tracking. She tells him plainly that love cannot mean daily fear. Jesse agrees, sulks, agrees again. He introduces Ava as his future wife to staff who have seen many girlfriends come and go.

The closing chapters give the couple a fragile peace. They finish rooms at The Manor House together, arguing happily about lamps instead of loyalty. Ava pushes for warm wood and soft chairs where guests can rest late. Jesse learns to wait in the car without storming site cabins. They laugh more over small things, burned toast, lost keys, wrong paint tins. The book ends with them together and engaged in intent, opening straight into the next volume of the trilogy.

I closed the book with mixed feelings that lean warm. This Man is uneven, too long, too forgiving of jealous control, too fond of reunion sex as plot glue. It also has a vivid heroine voice and a strong sense of work and friendship. Ava growth feels earned even if incomplete. Jesse change is promised more than proved, which fits a first book in three. Readers curious about why this series sold so well in 2013 will find the answer here in Ava plain talk and Jesse relentless want.

For me the staying image is small. Ava on a train with a roll of drawings, phone buzzing with Jesse name, choosing to finish her notes before she answers. A tiny delay. A kept boundary. If she can hold that pause, the next books might give her the equal love she keeps asking for.