Joseph Martin has been my best friend’s boss for years. So when she comes to me, with this half baked idea of me posing as his girlfriend to help him out, I’m tempted to tell her to take a hike.
But then she begs.
And pleads.
And says that he’ll pay off my med school bills and… you guessed it, I cave.
Even though I hate him. Even though we apparently hate each other (I’m not the one who didn’t anything wrong, mind you). But things aren’t always how they seem and the guy I thought I couldn’t stand, I suddenly find myself falling for.
It was supposed to be fake. An arrangement with no strings attached.
So why can’t I stop wanting more?
| Title: | Falling for the Boss |
| Author: | J. Sterling |
| Series: | Fun for the Holidays (Book 6) |
| Pages: | 127 |
| Category / Genre(s): | Contemporary |
| Trope(s): | Enemies to Lovers Fake Relationship |
| Point of View: | First Person, Past Tense, Dual Viewpoint (H & h) |
| Location: | New York, USA |
| HEA: | ✔️ |
| Release Date: | 1st September 2022 |
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Not as fun or flirty as I’d expected
This is the 6th book in J. Sterling’s Fun for the Holidays series – according to the series blurb “lighthearted and happy reads…to enjoy yourself and get lost in”. All the books are complete stand alones (not even any overlapping characters as far as I can see) and come with its own HEA.
With that said, the first chapter of this book was a bit of a jolt – it detailed the hero losing his father in 9/11 and his feelings after the fact. Certainly neither lighthearted or happy. I let it go, thinking it would become pertinent later in the book. It didn’t. There was absolutely no point in it, in my opinion. The fake girlfriend scheme was so that the hero’s mother would feel comfortable once again living her life after the loss of her husband. We didn’t need to hear the details of his demise – certainly not in an event which traumatised the whole word.
But anyway… that aside, what we get here is a short tale (127 pages) with enemies to lovers and fake relationship tropes. Joseph and Sutton (a woman) have met each other previously and don’t particularly like the other. But when Joseph needs a fake date to fool his mother during a month of social events, Sutton is his last and only hope. But almost from the start, it doesn’t feel much like a ruse.
“…the writing was engaging and I had absolutely no problem reading this book…”
We get a lot of Joseph and his assistant, Kayla, for the first few chapters and I have to admit it was hard to really fall for Joseph. I liked the banter between Joseph and Kayla but I did wonder if she was gay simply to stop her from seeming to be a threat for Sutton. Joseph was a strange mix of playboy and ‘Prince Charming’s other brother’. He was supposed to be ridiculously gorgeous and have the paparazzi following him wherever he went but he was the CEO of a staffing company for goodness sake. He wasn’t my type of hero but he was okay.
Sutton, too, was a bit marmite for me. She was very career focussed – which is fine – but she wasn’t really any more than that. Which was a bit of a shame, really.
I liked Joseph and Sutton together – once they got over their, erm, hate for each other. As the feelings started to change and develop, they had a nice rapport and were really cute together. Had the book been longer, I think the development of their feelings would have been better explored and as a result, a bit more believable. There was some heat in the book but it was tacked on at the end of the book once the feelings were revealed. Still, I’m not complaining.
I adored the first book in this series (Kissing My Co-Worker) but this one just didn’t reach the same heights, sadly. With that said, the writing was engaging and I had absolutely no problem reading this book, or picking it up when I’d put it down. Perhaps the first chapter put me on a bit of a downer, or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood – either way, I didn’t connect with the book but from other reviews, may others did. I hope that, if you pick up this book, you enjoy it more than I did. Just 3 stars from me, I’m afraid.
* I received this book in exchange for my honest review *
J. (jenn) Sterling is a New York Times and USA Today best selling author of multiple contemporary romances. She lives in California with her only son, Blake. If you can’t find her sitting behind a computer screen writing new stories, then there’s a good chance she’s sitting in the bleachers of a baseball stadium watching him play.
Jenn enjoys traveling to new places, meeting her readers and spending time with the love of her life, the one & only, Jack F’n Carter! Oh yeah, it’s true. <3
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