How to Train Your Billionaire Kendall Ryan

I really struggled with **How to Train Your Billionaire**, which surprised me because I normally really enjoy Kendall Ryan. In fact, there were moments when I genuinely stopped and double-checked that there wasn’t another author named Kendall Ryan because this just didn’t feel like one of her books to me.

The setup had potential. Frankie is newly unemployed when she’s hired as a travel companion for eccentric billionaire Charles Winthrop. Suddenly she’s traveling the world, staying in gorgeous places, lounging on yachts, and crossing paths with Charles’s grumpy, suspicious, and very attractive nephew, Hayes.

Cute premise. Unfortunately, I never completely bought into it.

I kept wondering why Charles had hired this complete stranger to travel around the world with him, especially when Frankie didn’t seem to have much of an actual job beyond keeping him company. Had they been traveling to company offices or had Frankie been working for Charles or Hayes in some capacity, I think I could have suspended my disbelief a little more. Instead, it often felt like Frankie was on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation while occasionally complaining about her boss’s hot nephew.

But my bigger issue was the romance itself.

For a romance, Hayes and Frankie spend surprisingly little time together for a large portion of the book. Charles and Frankie’s relationship actually feels more developed than Frankie and Hayes’s. Hayes pops in and out of the story, and while we’re told there’s an attraction growing between them, I never really *felt* it.

I wanted tension. I wanted longing. I wanted those moments where these two people are trying desperately not to want each other and failing spectacularly. Instead, they’re both able to go off and flirt with other people, Hayes even brings another woman back to the yacht, and Frankie and Hayes don’t really start moving toward an actual romance until well into the book.

Then, when things finally do happen between them, the book is closed door. Normally, that alone wouldn’t bother me if the chemistry had been simmering on the page, but here it made the romance feel even more distant. There simply wasn’t enough passion or emotional intimacy beforehand to make those moments carry the weight I wanted them to.

And Hayes? Sir.

The first time Frankie lets herself trust him, she wakes up to discover he hasn’t just left the bed. **The man left the COUNTRY.**

That is not simply “commitment issues.” That is a red flag with its own passport.

So when Frankie eventually forgives him and lets him back into her life, I needed Hayes to work much harder for it. His eventual realization that he wants Frankie felt sudden because I hadn’t seen enough relationship development to get him from emotionally unavailable and actively avoiding his feelings to ready to commit.

There were also a few story developments that happened so quickly I wondered if I had accidentally skipped pages. Frankie’s new job, in particular, seemed to appear out of nowhere, and I actually went backward to see if I’d missed something.

There *are* things here I liked. Frankie and Hayes have some fun banter, their mental connection works, Charles is endearing, and the glamorous travel provides plenty of escapism. I can absolutely see this working for readers looking for a light, low-angst, closed-door billionaire romance with lots of beautiful destinations.

But for me, the romance needed to be the center of the story, and it never quite got there. I wanted more Hayes and Frankie together, more chemistry, more yearning, and a much stronger emotional payoff.

I normally enjoy Kendall Ryan’s books, so I’m chalking this one up to simply not being the book for me. The bones of a really cute romance were there. I just needed a lot more romance on those bones.