Married with Benefits

Author: Ellie Palmer Title: Married with Benefits Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Date Published: 07/21/2026

Read Dates: 06/12/2026- 06/13/2026
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

 📖 I received a gifted e-book ARC. The following is my honest review✍🏻

Married with Benefits is a single POV marriage of convenience romance. Lainey wants nothing more than to leave her tiny home town, but a migraine condition with prohibitively expensive medication that isn’t covered by her insurance makes it hard to cobble together enough savings from her various gig jobs to make a change. When she finds out that her grandmother never technically owned the house Lainey was raised in, she’s worried she’ll soon become homeless, but a squatters rights law works in her favor and Lainey gets to keep the house… but not the land. The new owner of the property, Elliott, is an architect who admires the work of the man who built the home, and had hopes of renting out the property. He proposes a solution- Elliott and Lainey will enter a marriage of convenience so that she can be added to his health insurance, and they will work together to improve the property until he makes enough to buy her out so she can start fresh elsewhere. The marriage of convenience becomes a lot less convenient when two untrusting people begin to develop pesky and complicated feelings!

This was a fun and slightly chaotic read! Lainey trying to piece together a living with gig work was both funny and just a sad indictment of the American medical/insurance system. Her migraines prevent her from holding down a steady job with good insurance, and without a steady job with benefits, she can’t afford insurance that will cover her migraine medication! Her various odd jobs and the deals she works out with people around town to keep her head above water and her grandmother out of trouble were amusing. Elliott being unsure what to make of the situation he found himself in was definitely relatable but I admired the way he just embraced the chaos to get closer to her! In many ways this seemed like an opposites attract story, but Elliott and Lainey were more similar than they realized and watching them figure that out was moving. So many fun side characters and scenes (their wedding!!) really made this a joy to read!

Lainey Davis can't wait for the day she'll be able to escape her tiny Wisconsin town. But she's not even close to covering her health insurance premiums and pricey migraine medication, let alone saving up enough to start over some place new. That is, until Lainey receives some news that might upend her unlucky streak. Through the archaic legal doctrine of adverse possession, Lainey has inadvertently squatted her way into owning one of the most notorious houses in modern architectural history.

But Lainey owns only the house. The surrounding property, a lakeside money pit the previous owner used as a front to deal illegal reptiles, has been willed to newcomer Elliot Hodges, a D.C. architect who wants to rent the place to fellow architecture lovers. Neither can rent or sell without reaching an agreement.

Desperate to rent out the only valuable house on the property, Elliot proposes an unconventional marry him for health insurance and in exchange, she’ll allow him to rent the house as part of his resort until he’s saved enough to buy her out. It's a win-win Lainey will finally have a way out of her small town, and he’ll own the house designed by his architectural idol. But when the end date looms and their connection grows, Lainey’s no longer sure what’s more leaving Elliot behind or letting him in.