Sameer Gudhate on Why Claim by Aarti V Raman Feels Less Like a Romance and More Like an Emotional Collision Between Power, Loneliness, and Desire

There are romance novels that feel manufactured entirely out of fantasy, and then there are books like Claim that understand something darker about attraction — how sometimes two wounded people don’t fall in love gently. They collide like storms over a city already carrying too much damage beneath its skyline.

That was the feeling I carried through most of this book.

Not softness. Collision.

I had wanted Drake Fallahil’s story ever since he appeared earlier as the fiercely protective brother who always seemed to be standing slightly outside the emotional frame, watching everyone else while refusing to be fully seen himself. Characters like that are dangerous in romance fiction because expectations become enormous. Either the mystery breaks apart when the spotlight finally arrives… or the author reveals why the silence existed in the first place.

Aarti V Raman manages the second.

Drake enters this narrative carrying the reputation of a monster — a Silicon Valley titan built out of control, ruthlessness, and secrets — but what fascinated me was not the billionaire façade. It was the exhaustion beneath it. The book repeatedly hints that power does not erase loneliness; it simply gives loneliness better tailoring and a penthouse view.

And then there is Anya.

Honestly, Anya is the emotional backbone of this entire narrative.

She could have easily become another trope-driven “feisty poor girl” written only to soften the billionaire hero. Instead, she arrives with intelligence, survival instincts, anger, dignity, and enough emotional resistance to make every interaction feel alive. I loved that her strength never felt performative. It felt expensive. Earned. Like someone who has spent years carrying responsibilities heavier than her age.

The marriage-of-convenience setup is familiar territory in romance fiction, but the narrative rarely feels lazy because the emotional pacing keeps shifting underneath the reader. One moment the story operates like a glossy billionaire fantasy, and then suddenly it turns sharp with danger, family wounds, economic desperation, or psychological tension. The book almost behaves like a luxury car hiding a cracked engine underneath the hood — polished on the outside, unstable in deeply human ways underneath.

That contrast kept me hooked.

There is also something distinctly cinematic about Aarti’s narrative style. Several scenes genuinely feel staged for the screen: towering skylines, dangerous negotiations, emotionally charged confrontations, lavish weddings, hidden vulnerabilities surfacing in private spaces. At times I felt less like I was reading paragraphs and more like I was watching a high-budget streaming drama at 2 a.m. while telling myself, “One more chapter,” until suddenly the sky outside is turning blue.

What impressed me most, though, was the emotional layering beneath the romance. The age gap between Drake and Anya is not treated merely as fantasy fuel. It quietly shapes power dynamics, emotional misunderstandings, control issues, and the way both characters interpret vulnerability. Their attraction is intense, yes, but what makes the narrative work is the constant uncertainty surrounding trust. Several times I found myself emotionally conflicted about Drake — unsure whether I wanted Anya to move closer to him or run in the opposite direction.

That tension gives the book its pulse.

One thing Aarti consistently does well across her stories is writing women who do not emotionally disappear inside powerful men’s worlds. Anya bends at times, struggles at times, desires at times — but she never dissolves. That matters. Especially in billionaire romance, where female characters sometimes become decorative rewards instead of emotional equals.

The pacing does occasionally become overcrowded. There are moments where the interconnected characters, business politics, and suspense threads threaten to overwhelm the emotional intimacy at the center. Readers who prefer quieter romances may find the scale slightly excessive. But strangely, that excess is also part of the book’s identity. Claim does not want to be a minimal love story whispered softly in a corner café. It wants drama, danger, emotional warfare, luxury, obsession, family scars, and cinematic intensity all at once.

And for the most part, it earns that ambition.

One sentence stayed with me long after I finished reading: sometimes the people who try hardest to control the world are terrified of the one person who makes them feel emotionally visible.

That is Drake’s real conflict.

Not power.

Not business.

Not reputation.

Visibility.

By the final pages, what lingered for me was not the billionaire fantasy or even the romance itself, but the emotional idea underneath it — that love becomes frightening when it threatens identities people spent years constructing to survive.

If you enjoy emotionally charged romance filled with tension, dangerous attraction, layered characters, and cinematic storytelling, Claim is the kind of book that quietly hijacks your evening plans and refuses to let go.

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