Reviews

I really wanted to love this book. 1) The main character, Wendy, has conversations with others overflowing with pop culture references, reminiscent of Buffy! 2) The book mentions DEBs!!!! 3) I laughed a lot while reading this book. This was an enjoyable read but I felt like there were missing parts. The romance just didn't land for me. Janet and Wendy get together for some fun after Janet discovers an email by Wendy with a sex dream involving Janet. Some how they decide to try a relationship, have a phone sex session, then go on their "first date" as a work trip, then breakup after some boundaries are crossed and one thinks they are unworthy, and then suddenly they are in love/settling for. It just felt like the romance skipped right over or condense some of the steps.

Overall, I did enjoy the read and would recommend for those who like office romances.

lezreadalot's review against another edition

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3.0

What a wonderful thing to be able to go and get Wendy back on her skin, whenever she chose.

Well... this is kinda unfortunate! When I updated around 1/3 of the way through the book, I was so optimistic and really enjoying myself with this romance, and I figured it would only go up from there. But alas, it went down. I don't think it's a bad book, but after the halfway mark, it started to lose its charm, wasn't half as funny, and the characters did and said some things that rubbed me the wrong way. 3 stars isn't a bad rating, but for a book that started off SO WELL, I'm disappointed that this is what I'm landing on.

This is an age gap, boss-employee workplace rom-com. Rom-coms are always so hit or miss for me, because if my sense of humour doesn't align with the author's, then it can start feeling tedious and try-hard. But I really loved the way this was told at first, and the humour was spot on. A bit eye-roll worthy at times, a little over the top, but so funny. I loved Wendy's voice, how quippy and sarcastic she was, and on more than one occasion, I actually burst out laughing. Which does not happen often to me. Wendy falls heads over heels for an older woman in an elevator, a woman who she later comes to realise is her boss at this big aerospace company. And everything about the way it was described was so funny and sweet and charming and again, genuinely funny. The author uses a lot of real life references and pop culture references, but in a way that actually wasn't obnoxious. And for me, that's saying something, because I almost ALWAYS think pop culture references are obnoxious. That was in Wendy's POV. Janet's POV, at least at first, was starkly different in a way I really enjoyed. She recently separated from her wife, and is just going through the motions, dealing with her feelings about that, and then Wendy unexpectedly swoops into her life. Their flirting was so good. Their banter was everything. The scene with the soup had me in stitches. This was a true rom-com in every sense of the word, and I was eating it up. I loved the scenes with Wendy's sister and her family; that was such a fun dynamic and made me smile a lot.

Things started to go downhill maybe halfway through? A little before that, even. Like, I didn't like the pacing. Things seemed to be moving forward sexually waaaaay faster than they moved romantically. That definitely isn't a bad thing, but the romance really never seemed like it caught up. I have a great idea of why each of these women are attracted to each other, and how great they are in bed, but the romance was negligible. We moved from one point to the other soo quickly. I like a good taboo boss/employee romance when it's done well, but they were so blasé and casual about it. There are reasons for that, on Wendy's side, but I couldn't believe that Janet didn't hesitate at least a little. Some of the sexy, fun shenanigans were kinda uncomfortable, because there was no discussion.

Spoiler

Like, Janet making Wendy record that sexy email, the stuff that happened in the office, Wendy promising that she would delete Janet's photos while thinking 'I'm not gonna delete them! :D'

They didn't talk half as much as they needed to, and as much as I loved their quippy banter, I wanted them to have serious discussions way more often. I truly didn't even feel like they knew each other.

Also, for more than half the book, I forgot what their jobs were, because they barely talked about it. But then they did start talking about it, about schematics and planes and weapons and working for the army and stratagems for war and both women became abruptly so much less attractive to me, lol. Is that shallow? Sorry!! I don't care about military contractors or whatever. I found the conflict to be clumsy, and there are certain characters that should have been introduced way earlier, if they were going to play a part in the ending. All the humour and references to movies and TV shows that I had found so amusing in the beginning started to really grate on my nerves. Like, there were just SO many of them, it started to feel a little forced. The relationship conflict at the end felt like it had no weight, because again, the book had not sufficiently convinced me they had real feelings for each other. As a romance, this started off so well, but then just fizzled.

(This is also pretty shallow, but I was hoping for dominant, butch-leaning Wendy, and I did not get that lol. It literally happened once upon a dream, and never again.)

Listened to the audiobook as read by Anastasia Watley, which makes me even sadder that this gets such a mid rating from me. Because this might be one of my favourites that she's ever narrated. She did such a good job with the humour, the timing of Wendy's little jokes, the intonation on some of those one-liners. It was soooo good. While this was a bit of a disappointment, I still want to read more from the author. There were lots of great things about the writing, but the book just wasn't as well-rounded as I might have liked.

danikass's review against another edition

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1.0

I'm not really sure why this ARC is here, given that it was published in 2016. But here we are, and I wish we weren't. This was easily, one of the worst books I've ever read. Wendy and Jane had zero chemistry, and we didn't get any actual smut. Phone sex/fantasies are fun, but there should be something actually in addition to that, right? The steps between coworkers to lovers to in love didn't really exist. Both Janet and Wendy were insufferable, albeit in very different ways. Wendy felt like a teenage boy. The villain story is absolutely hilarious.

Then there's things that just don't make sense on a practical level.: Why does it take more than six hours to fly nonstop from Chicago to Arizona? What airport bathroom is ever empty enough to turn it into a ... shower? bath? That whole scene was weird. I also couldn't figure out where in New York they were. Close enough to an airport to drive there easily, but able to see rolling hills outside of a window, and enough room to have a defense contractor site. I think this author did not know where we were at any point. All of this could have been forgiven if the romance was good, but it just wasn't.

rainbowbookworm's review against another edition

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1.5

I’ll admit, I wasn’t drawn to this one because of the boss/employee dynamic—I was drawn in spite of it. I love a good age-gap romance, but this one fell flat and veered into icky territory on many levels.

The setup had potential, but the execution felt clunky and unconvincing. Janet, who’s portrayed as a capable and controlled boss, makes a series of choices that seemed completely out of character. Recording Wendy reading her sexual fantasy? Sending nudes? For someone supposedly so composed, these actions felt forced and unrealistic.

Wendy’s side of the story didn’t fare much better. Her naivety in falling for a heavily foreshadowed scheme was frustrating, and the "big twist" that was supposed to fix everything was equally predictable. It all felt like a sequence of poorly executed plot devices rather than an organic romance unfolding.

On top of that, there were a lot of very dated references to technology and pop culture, which makes sense for a novel written in 2016. In fact, the publication date explains many things I didn’t enjoy about this one. Consent and the way sex scenes are written have come a long way since then, and this book feels stuck in the past. Speaking of which, while I know some readers might enjoy the sex scenes, I found them lacking in emotional authenticity.

If you love age-gap romances like I do, you might want to skip this one. It’s less about a heartfelt connection and more about contrived drama and questionable decisions.

bookisheverafter's review against another edition

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4.0

This book has everything that I love - lesbians, age-gap, office romace, spice. Also A LOT of pop-culture references, I don't mind them, but I know a lot of people do, so I thought I'd mention that.

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