ARC Review: Trusting The Boss by Mallory Crowe

This is my second “role reversal” book in this series. I really didn’t like the last book because I thought the heroine was rude and unlovable. This book is kind of a follow up to the last one and will spoil the mystery in the last book if you haven’t read that one. So, stop reading now if you want to read the last book. The heroine in this book, Emma, is the wealthy “boss” character and Jace is a security expert who assists her in finding out why her sister went batsh!t crazy. Jace is initially reluctant to get involved with Emma but is nice enough to change his mind. For Emma’s own good of course.

I liked this book much better than the last one and I have to admit I was kind of giving myself the sideeye for that. Emma is a much more palatable character, in my mind, than Victoria was in the last book. At first I was concerned that I only felt that way because Emma was more of a socialite than a CEO. After chastising myself for not being able to deal with a female CEO, I realized that wasn’t the issue at all. The thing that I like about Emma is that she’s actually a nice person with good intentions who never put Jace down for not being as rich her. Jace was a dangerous sort of alpha male that I really loved. He came complete with threats to toss Emma over his shoulder, growling and smirking. I can deal with all of that.

I also thought there was more development of the relationship between Emma and Jace than we found in the last book. Because Jace is more Emma’s equal in the story, they are depicted as a team instead of a boss and an employee. Although none of the books in this series are very lengthy, I thought there were a fair amount of pages devoted to establishing the connection between Emma and Jace. One thing I didn’t love is that this book was a continuation of the mystery in the last book. It seemed to me that the story line of crazy Joslyn was all wrapped up. I totally did not understand why Emma was looking into that event further. It was ok that it developed into another sub-mystery but I would have preferred to see a brand new story line.

In general this book, and all of the books in this series, are fast easy reads. They are good ways to kill some time without getting involved in anything too heavy. The sex is always secondary to the storyline and very…meh. But you get the thrill of a suspense against a fast paced background and some decent writing.

**ARC provided by RockStarLit PR**

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ARC Review: Tempting The Boss by Mallory Crowe

I struggled to give this book an accurate numerical rating and I'm not sure that even now I achieved my goal. My issue is that I know that I am biased against the theme of this book and it's difficult to rate the substance of a book when you are automatically turned off by the story line.

Tempting The Boss is what I call a "role reversal" book in that the boss is the female character, Victoria. The "tempter" is the handyman/bodyguard Dean. And right from there, me and this book started a rocky, albeit brief, relationship. I found out something important about myself as a romance reader- I'm a little (or a lot) sexist. Whatever it says about me, I just don't like a book where the female character takes the dominant role and the male character is broke and a little pitiful. I admit I don't mind if both characters are rich or both characters are poor, but if there's a disparity, I don't like it going in the direction it did in this book. However, I'm just not sure if that should effect my rating because the blurb of this book tells you what it's about so readers like me can just bypass it. I didn't read the blurb before I read the book because I read the first two books in the series and I liked them. I just assumed this one would be along the same lines. It wasn't and I don't think I should punish the author for that so my 2 star rating was my attempt to just rate the book if I wasn't biased. I'm telling you all this so you know up front to take my review and rating with a huge grain of salt.

In the beginning of the book Victoria is the CEO of her families company and Dean is the onsite handyman of a corporate event she is throwing. Right from jump, Victoria is rude, cold and calculating. In the first scene of the book Victoria is yelling at Dean for dropping one screw on the floor hours before her event was set to start. And oh, it gets better. At some point during their first day knowing each other a situation arises in which Dean has to save Victoria's life. I had to go back and read the scene twice because I thought I missed something. Victoria does not even thank Dean for saving her LIFE! She is still rude to him, marginalizes his concerns for her safety and continues with her work event.

I absolutely wanted to put the book down at that point and just stop reading but I held out hope that Victoria and Dean could improve their situation.and their interactions with one another. Didn't happen. As the book progresses or digresses depending on your perspective, Dean is continuously protecting Victoria. Victoria's response continues to be to degrade Dean for his concern. Eventually she makes a comment like 'what are you going to do if I'm in trouble, change a light bulb' ...because he's a handyman.... Yes, Victoria is depicted as being under stress so while she's normally a b!tch, I think the author wanted us to attribute her behavior in the book to her stress.

What I couldn't understand and would effect my rating of any book is why Dean put up with Victoria. Why did Dean care about her? Why did he develop feelings for her? And for that matter, why did Victoria start to care about Dean? Yes, at some point in the book they start to have some earth shattering sex but outside of that, Victoria continues to be an ice queen and Dean continues to be her punching bag. I just couldn't like that or even really understand it.

I'm ashamed of myself because there's a chance that if the roles had been reversed in this book, I wouldn't have disliked it quite as much. I don't know. I do know that this was a romance novel in which I never got the justification for the romance and that's a problem. The writing is good, the pace is good- this is a really easy read. There is a mystery/suspense component but I figured that out pretty quickly and there were no unexpected twist though there is a twist of sorts.

My advice to potential readers is this: If you like a dominating, cold female and don't mind the man being her subordinate of sorts, you might be ok with this book. If you're like me, this isn't going to be the book to change your mind about romance role reversal.

P.S. If you've read any of my past reviews, you know I hate weak heroines, I do. My problem with Victoria was not that she was strong, my problem was that she was rude for no valid reason. What really bothered me was that even after Victoria "connected" to Dean, she continued to be inexplicable ill mannered. Assertive and rude have very different definitions. Google the words if you don't believe me.

**ARC provided by RockStarLit PR**

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ARC Review: Teasing the Boss by Mallory Crowe

I liked this book but I didn't love it. Right from the beginning I had issues with the underlying facts of this book. Grace was suffering from a manufactured scandal that was slowly and surely sinking her business. Simon is a fixer circa Olivia Pope who agrees to help her "fix" her situation if she agrees to help him somehow bring down one of her exes. Simon believes the ex is involved in some dirty financial dealings and has not been able to acquire enough evidence to prove it. He thinks that with Graces help, he can finally get the inside track on the ex.

I liked the set up for the story and I had high hopes that it would go somewhere good. My problem is that Grace's issue that needed fixing is resolved in like the first 10% of the book so I didn't really understand the need for Simon to parade around like he and Grace were together when they actually weren't. My next problem was that the ex didn't seem to be buying Simon's cover story from the outset which just contributed to my feeling that it didn't really make sense.to continue the fake relationship.

I liked that the book was written in the third person and rotated POVs between Grace and Simon but something about the transitions confused me at certain points. I had to double check which POV we were in more than once. I actually like Simon and Grace's relationship but the development was a little...underdeveloped. It wasn't instalove but I would have liked to have seen more sharing between the two characters before they developed a deep attachment.

There were points in the book where Grace was aggravating and Simon was ingratiating. At first Simon is depicted as the super alpha sort but too quickly he loses his edge and comes across as far weaker. In general I did like Simon and I didn't hate Grace.

As for the suspense and mystery element, it was ok but like I said at first, there were some logical lapses that are really tough to deal with when reading a suspense/mystery. Because all the facts didn't really fit together, the end of the book seemed a little disjointed from the rest and at worst, it was far fetched.

I know it might seem like I'm writing a bad review but I'm actually not. My general impression after reading this book was that I liked it overall. There were just a lot of little things in the details of the story line that I think could have used some polish. I still say this book is a worthwhile read, especially for all you rich guy romance fans.

**ARC provided by RockStarLit PR**

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ARC Review: Teaching the Boss by Mallory Crowe

I have to start by saying that I recognize the fact that sometimes a book is just unlucky in my reading list and this may be one of them. I’ve read quite a few books lately that follow pretty well known formulas in the romance world and I think I’m just reaching an exhaustion point. So keep that in mind when reading my review.

First, let’s go with the good stuff. The writing of this book is good. The descriptions were appropriate, the plot was well structured, the book moved at a good pace and the characters were pretty well developed. Indeed, if you are not currently suffering from office assistant/boss romance fatigue, this might be a really good selection for you.

April is Sam’s assistant. Sam owns a large successful company but April has been with him since he was just some stale nachos and not the whole Taco Bell or whatever. Apparently when April started her job with Sam she was more into eating ho hos than being a ho ho. She grew up found herself a diet and luckily she wasn’t one of those people who loses weight just to discover they have an unattractive face. But still, Sam doesn’t seem to notice her in a romantic way until his model girlfriend gets jealous and tells him to get rid of April. Same is inexplicably weak minded in relation to the chick he met two minutes ago, agrees to get rid of April, her feelings get hurt etc. etc. etc. I don’t want to spoil anything but you can see where things headed.

Here’s more good news about this book, there were some interesting things that happened after April started working for Sam’s dad. And even though I sometimes wished April displayed a little more common sense, she was empathetic and did try to mend the broke down fences between Sam and his Dad. Sam was kind of an ok character but at times he gave me a spoiled rich boy vibe (which is actually pointed out by April at one point). The only downside here is that I’m just not sure corporate espionage works the way the author depicted. And by that I mean that it seemed like total fiction. I’m not going to knock the author for that though since this is after all fiction.

The relationship between April and Sam is well developed and I think you will root for them as a couple despite some early shenanigans in the plot. The sex scenes are very average. Nothing inspiring but not like Harlequin in the 80’s either, just ok.

Because the writing of this book is good, the plot was entertaining and the characters and relationship were well developed, I recommend this book. Just don’t read it around the same time as a bunch of other office romances.

**ARC provided by RockStarLit PR**

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