This Man (2012) Beneath This Man (2013) This Man Confessed (2013)
⚡ Pace: fast · 🎭 Emotions: intense, dramatic · 🚪 Entry threshold: low · ⭐ Why read: addictive chemistry, intense emotions
When interior designer Ava O’Shea meets Jesse Ward, owner of the opulent country estate called The Manor, she expects a client – not an obsession. This Man, the first novel in Jodi Ellen Malpas’s trilogy, begins like a story of attraction and spirals into one of surrender, healing, and control. Across three books (This Man, Beneath This Man, This Man Confessed), Malpas explores love as both addiction and redemption – an affair between two damaged people who can’t seem to let go or stay away.
Ava is independent but drawn to the force that is Jesse – charming, volatile, deeply broken. Their relationship burns fast and rough, full of desire, secrets, and fear of loss. Beneath the sensuality, Malpas examines trauma and self-forgiveness, showing how intimacy can be both dangerous and transformative. Jesse’s obsessive love isn’t romanticised; it’s dissected, tested, softened by vulnerability. The chemistry is physical, but the story’s heartbeat lies in emotional survival.
What makes This Man stand out among contemporary romances is its raw intensity. Malpas writes without irony, giving the characters full permission to be messy, possessive, human. The trilogy evolves from erotic fantasy into something closer to confession – a portrait of two people learning that love can’t erase pain, but it can give it meaning. By the end, passion finds its balance not in control, but in surrender.
📚 Did you know 📖
The This Man series by Jodi Ellen Malpas was published between 2012 and 2014 and became one of the first major British responses to the wave of “erotic romance” following the success of Fifty Shades of Grey.
The novels quickly reached the top of the New York Times and Sunday Times lists, bringing Malpas international recognition.
The story of Jesse Ward and Ava O’Shea stood out for its blend of sensual drama and British settings, which made it distinctive among its peers.
Malpas’s books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
In 2017, the novella All I Am: Drew’s Story was published, and in 2018, the novel With This Man was released, continuing the story of the main characters years later.
Legend has it: the author confessed that the trilogy’s titles came to her in a dream – she scribbled them down on a napkin in the middle of the night.