This is my first Harlequin Presents ever. It might be my first category ever. I'd always assumed that I wouldn't like categories, since titles like The Billionaire Sheik's Inexperienced Virgin Mistress made me snort my coffee.

The title In Bed with the Boss didn't seem much better, but given the flap at Dear Author over the similarities between the self-published Working Arrangements by Ellen Wolf and the earlier book In Bed by Susan Napier, I figured that the best way to support an author who may or may not have been plagiarized was the buy her book. So I did.

And I zipped through it in a single day.

It does seem a bit dated in terms of clothing and technology, but no so much that it prevented me from enjoying the book, primarily because Napier does a great job at describing emotional states.

Virtually the entire book is told from the heroine's POV, and her hurt, confusion, and frustration really rang true. She's also quite unflappable, given the hero's outrageous behavior. I was surprised at how much I sympathized with Duncan, who wages a no-holds-barred attempt to woo Kalera, who has just announced that she's getting married.

Duncan missed out on his first chance with her, and now he sees his second and last chance slipping away. So he goes all out. The reader knows before Kalera that she's in love with Duncan; it's also obvious to everyone (except Kalera) that her fiance is a poor choice for a husband. So Napier sets up the reader to root for the hero when he invites himself to a romantic dinner with the engaged couple, crashes their engagement party, and generally makes a nuisance of himself.

I'm happy to say that my reading horizons have once again been broadened and I'll be giving categories much more than a glance and a snort in the future.