So much potential – so little pay off

Warning: this is a terribly disjointed review about a terrible book. It had potential, but it was all shot to hell. My review is barely coherent and it’s taken me over a week to write it because I can’t articulate properly what sucked so bad about this one. My review is full of questions. Questions I cannot make sense of. God, I hated this book.

Jessica is helping launch a new makeup line and needs someone to pose as her boyfriend for a week of media events. Why does she need a fake boyfriend? Her boss is sexually harassing her and trying to start a relationship with her, despite Jessica clearly stating her lack of interest and the boss being married. That’s why I bought this one – for the pseudo marriage of convenience plot. One of the few things I liked about the book was Jessica’s reasoning for taking this track. She has been very clear with her boss all along that she is not interested in a relationship. She is (appropriately) worried that she cannot take his behavior to HR without backlash on herself. Her sole goal is to get this line launched and write her own ticket out of there.

Dan’s agenda in agreeing to be the fake date is apparently that he is looking for a soul mate relationship like his parents’ had. He feels like he doesn’t understand women and so wants to pick the brain of one single woman to understand all women? I don’t know guys. It made no sense. Because Dan is an independent millionaire (of *course* he is) and there was no other reason that he would agree to Jessica’s plans? So, he decides to start by asking really uncomfortably personal questions about her sex kinks. This, I thought, could have turned this book super sexy and fun, but instead, after a single conversation this whole line of plot died, never to be heard from again.

This book takes place in New York City. Jessica is being put up at a hotel for the week. I do not know why. Is this a thing companies do? She lives in the City. The events do not take place at the hotel. I think the author just did this to have an accessible place for the boss to try and make a move? Also – there is a scene where they can’t find a cab (?) and so they take a horse drawn carriage. No one who actually lives in NYC touches those things!!! Those are for tourists. And if there is such a thing as a time when you can’t get a cab (again…?) the carriages are not out.

Jessica’s one real attribute is that she is career driven and does not want anything to get in the way of her advancement. That’s fine. I can get on board. But, they instantly fall in love. Jessica’s solution to this is to say that they should meet up four times a year for a week of sex and then live separate lives the rest of the year so he doesn’t distract her. This is where the book truly went off the rails for me. Jessica was not described as someone with social issues so I can’t see how someone as “brilliant” as her would think this could ever work. It was all around nutty. And, Dan’s idea to humor her (even though he really hated her idea) was put forward as a sign of his true love for her. I think this was thrown in to cause tension in the relationship because the conflict with the boss never went anywhere. There was a lot of potential for funny run-in scenes with him as they pretended to be together. I think there was one, maybe two, of these – and disappointingly not funny. And the big ending to the boss problem happened really fast in a non-realistic way.

So, yeah, hated it. After two Harlequin outings I think I’m done. I came, I tried, I got angry.