Since neither of these books really rang my bell I thought I might combine them into one post. Both came from the Amazon KDP list. You can find Alana Davis’ Bonds of Attraction (still free) here, but Livia Royce‘s EMMAncipation seems to have been removed from Amazon.
Description from Goodreads:
“It was always strictly business. I had never slept with a client. I wasn’t about to start now.”
Julie Facet runs the hottest matchmaking agency in Los Angeles, but she doesn’t quite believe in happily ever afters. Despite the file cabinets full of clients she has found matches for, she isn’t interested in anything beyond simply satisfying her own physical needs. When Julie meets the wealthy Leon Christensen, her professionalism is pushed to the brink. Leon is charismatic and cocky, and does everything he can to get under Julie’s skin. Not to mention that he owns the Poison Ivy, a nightclub that’s designed for every sexual proclivity and uses his own sexuality to push women away.
Will she able to find a suitable partner for Leon, who prides himself in his no-strings-attached relationships?
And what will Julie do when she discovers that her feelings for Leon extend beyond the professional?
Review:
I really like this book’s cover but there are probably readers out there that will enjoy the book itself a lot more than me. Me, I couldn’t figure out where Julie’s attraction came from. Leon was a dick to her from the first moment they met, and that’s really putting it lightly. Then she spends most of the book building elaborate sexual fantasies about him that have nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the reality of the man she’d met. (By the end I was skimming, if not skipping them.)
Suddenly she ‘has feelings.’ What? She may have fallen in love with her fantasy, but the real deal (who she’d spoken to 3, maybe 4 times) was still calling her a whore and propositioning her in increasingly horrific ways. Unattractive doesn’t start to cover it. I imagine we’re supposed to understand he’s wounded and emotionally damaged. Our soft feminine urges to heal the injured male should be kicking in. Um…no. Just no. And when I thought Julie was finally gonna wise up and walk away he suddenly decided to bear his soul and the hearts and flowers start popping out all over the place. I think I got whiplash from trying to follow his sudden change of heart!
Now, I’ll credit the book with having a lead female that is comfortable with her body, even though it’s curvy and not a stick and with portraying a woman who is unashamed of her own sexuality. That really was refreshing, as was the fact that she wasn’t gagging to give up her control and cater to all of his BDSM fetishes. In fact, the subtext seemed to be that Leon craved the bondage because of his unhealthy self-image and within the confines of a safe, loving relationship a rather more vanilla scene still filled the bill. There are so many Shades Of Grey clones out there that it was nice to see female sexuality as something other than the weak-willed desire to submit and male sexuality as predatory. Don’t get me wrong, there is a little of this but it’s nowhere near as strong as it often is.
I’ll also admit that I might not have hated Leon as much if we were given any of his thoughts, feeling, opinions, etc. But the book is in first person, from the perspective of Julie and the reader isn’t given a single insight into Leon that isn’t mitigated through her. He feels very much like the creepy, life-sized cardboard cutout that she hangs in the corner and dreams about. He has no depth at all.
Add writing like this, “When my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness of the, shock stabbed my heart.” Or instances like the time I counted the word ‘car’ used 8 times in two brief paragraphs and I start to loose the will to read on. These latter matters I really could and would overlook. But I found the interactions between Julie and Leon really quite repulsive. Nope, there wasn’t a lot in this book that attracted me. I expect others to like it and fully acknowledge my opinion to be nothing more than that, but this was definitely not for me.
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Description from Goodreads:
“I am Julian’s never-failing factotum, patently designed to deal with every detail of his little life so he can go out and conquer the world,” says Emma, the executive assistant of Julian Byrne, president and CEO of a multi-million business media venture. From setting up meetings with computer magnates to midnight hook-ups with world famous models, Emma delivers for her boss. But her personal life is a mess thanks to countless extra work hours, days off disrupted by demanding phone calls, messed up weekends and “not a damn single vacation since I had gotten hired”. She desperately needs a break. When her boss, finally, agrees for her to take the long-awaited vacation, Emma exults maniacal. However, the evening before she is about to leave, her phone rings as a pending nuclear attack alarm (the most fitting ring tone she could choose for her boss). Julian is once again able to come up with a “special request” that would ruin her vacation plans. She’s on a verge of a crisis but a refusal to accomplish what he asks of her could cost Emma her job. Maybe it’s time to “Emmancipate”, to escape the tyrant Julian? However, she needs to teach him a hard lesson. This is the irresistible, fast-reading, tale of a crazy plan of “revenge.”
Review:
I didn’t particularly like the story all that much. I imagined it was going to be a lot like that Sandra Bullock/Hugh Grant movie, Two Weeks Notice, and it started out that way. I probably would have kept enjoying it if the plot had continued in that direction. Unfortunately Emma had to have an epiphany and concocted what had to be the most ridiculous revenge plan known to man. Seriously, there was no hope of it succeeding, which made the ending incredibly predictable.
Plus, I never really figured out what the point of it was. I didn’t see how her plan was supposed to have the desired effect on Julian. Nor did I understand what sense it made to come up with a scheme that would take all of her vacation because she was mad that Julian wanted her to work during some of her vacation. Seems to me she lost out more her way than his.
I also struggled with the book because I have a hard time with embarrassment. If I see someone being embarrassed I get embarrassed for/with them. This meant that most of the latter half of the book had me squirming.
Then there is the fact that Emma never got to have her say. She was really riled up in the beginning. That’s what led to the stupid plan in the first place. But she never got to tell Julian how she felt or why she went to such extremes. It just made her look desperate in the end. As if, instead of having a strong enough backbone to get her own back, she was a snivelling woman resorting to trick to sneak into a rich man’s bed. (Which wasn’t what she was doing.)
Come on, it would only have taken a couple paragraphs for her to explain herself. This lack of self expression and explanation made the very sudden happily ever after feel unrealistic. He treated her like dirt, her plan backfired and he took advantage of that. IMO there needed to have been a fight so that the two of them could clear the air and move on. It didn’t happen though. Which left me feeling like a big chunk of logic had been left out.
I did enjoy some of the media references and Emma’s sharp wit in the office. The writing was pretty good for the most part. There was some appreciable vocabulary–pleonastic, clepsydra, imprecations–but I did notice some stiff dialogue and the book could really do with one more edit. There are missing words, misused words, and the tenses are all over the place.
Final say, I didn’t care for it in the end. But I bet someone who is more inclined to like situational comedy and guaranteed happy endings would.