Tag: employer/employee

Review: Close To Heaven

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tl;dr: cute Christmas story with a too-long epilogue

The Story:

If you have read any of the other books in the Colorado High Country series (which I’ve only read one, and I loved it), then you already know Rain and Joe. Rain is the vivacious waitress at the pub that Joe owns in the small town of Scarlet Springs. I do not recall reading any whispers of Joe and Rain being romantic towards each other in the book I did read, but in this one, the whole town apparently knows about the attraction between the two.

Joe, for his part, doesn’t want to make any advances toward Rain because he feels that as her employer, that would make him an asshole. (He’s not wrong; in general, it’s a shitty thing to do.) But it goes beyond that, as when Rain’s house crumbles under a record-breaking snowfall and needs to seek shelter at Joe’s place, she discovers some journals in his library. Those journals are from Silas Moffatt, the great-great grandfather of Joe, who owned the town’s silver mine and caused a wave of destruction and murder and rape that Joe feels ashamed of.

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Review: Family Jewels

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tl;dr: could not get invested into this sorta-forbidden, sorta-office romance

The Story:

Context is key in romance. I learned this from Emily Nagoski, whose book Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life was eye-opening in not only a personal relationships sort of way, but also in the way that helps me explain why a romance novel works or doesn’t work for me. As far as romance novels go, the reader needs to have a sense of who the characters are, because most of the plot is driven by the emotional response to what is happening between the two characters. In Family Jewels, I couldn’t get enough of a sense of either character, and how they related to each other, in order to care about their romance.

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Review: A Bolt From The Blue

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tl; dr: sweet and sexy romance that I’d love to see expanded

The story:

Even as a person merely in my early thirties, I’ve been noticing more and more than I’m older than most of the people in the novels I read. For some reason, it seems to be accepted as fact that 20-somethings are the only type of people that have interesting things happen to them, particularly in romance novels. Is that because it’s too depressing to envision people in their 40s and 50s and still unattached? Rather than depressing, we should find it hopeful–it’s never too late to find love.

A Bolt from the Blue is a ‘second-chance’ romance, since it is the second ‘love of your life’ for Hope Elliot. (See, even less depressing! Two true loves in one lifetime!) After nearly a lifetime away from the city she grew up in, Hope has to return to settle her late parents’ estate and deal with the personality clash that happens to be her sister. Things heat up–literally–when lightning strikes the house and starts a small fire, causing some damage to the house’s outdated electrical system. Hope is evidently a brazen old broad, because she wastes no time seducing Mick, the master electrician recommended to her by the first response unit. They embark on a sordid affair, one that Hope makes no secret is limited-time-only, since she fully intends to return to her home in France.

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