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The Boss (The Boss, #1)

Abigail Barnette

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Jan 25, 2017 Christina rated it liked it

Shelves: contemp-romance

First, disclaimer time: I decided to read this book because I make fun of romance novels all the freaking time but I haven't actually read any, and it seems unfair. But it turns out romance is just not my genre. There are elements to this book that may be perfectly acceptable tropes in romance but struck me as absurd. So know that while I did not like this book, if you're a romance reader, you might.

There was something about this book that brought out the concerned elderly Midwestern lady in me. First, disclaimer time: I decided to read this book because I make fun of romance novels all the freaking time but I haven't actually read any, and it seems unfair. But it turns out romance is just not my genre. There are elements to this book that may be perfectly acceptable tropes in romance but struck me as absurd. So know that while I did not like this book, if you're a romance reader, you might.

There was something about this book that brought out the concerned elderly Midwestern lady in me. Now, I'm a not-that-old Northeastern woman so it's a little weird that that happens, but so it goes. My internal voice spoke in a worried Minnesotan accent and said things like: oh dear, that seems like it would hurt. It also got pedantic, noticing how goshdarn repetitive things got: yup, sure, "splayed" again, "wet" all over the place, "moaning" and "wailing" up the wazoo, oh, look, she's thinking AGAIN about how he's the only man who can do things like this to her. Honey, you're 26, this is very nice, but how do you know that? Oh, dear, his daughter is going to make things awkward for them, I think I would have run away immediately if I entered an apartment and realized my father were having sex upstairs, it's just good manners and also EW. Oh goodness, he just made dinner by hand with lots of spicy ingredients and now they're going to have sex? I hope SOMEONE washed his hands VERY WELL, because chili-pepper-fingers in certain sensitive areas would hurt.

This was the internal narrative that said "pardon ME, but it isn't good manners to have sex at work" and couldn't stop feeling sorry for the driver during the car sex scene.

The thing that made me just generally not care for this book was the fact that the sex scenes came as a bit of a relief because then at least we got a break from the heroine's insufferable internal narrative. While she was busy describing sex acts in repetitive and exhaustive detail at least she wasn't thinking about the rest of her life.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I could not for the life of me figure out how to pronounce her last name (Scaife? Is it pronounces like "scabies" but with an "f" instead of a "b" and no second "s"? Or like "scape" with an "f" instead of a "p"? Since she sometimes addressed herself by surname I never could get away from this and it bothered me). Maybe it was partly that I could really not care less about fashion magazine publishing. I also got exhausted with her thinking about her love interest. Her brain made me tired. Everyone surrounding her, too, was obnoxious: I didn't mind her stoner model roommate, but the "cool new secretary who does finger guns" actually ASKED HER IF THEY'D BEEN HAVING SEX IN THE OFFICE (who asks that? And, again, who ACTUALLY HAS SEX IN THE OFFICE?), and the loathsome photographer and recently departed boss were too one-dimensional for me to care about their awfulness.

Also, I would love very much to run into a book or movie where someone could get a cough, headache or nosebleed and it not mean they were dying, or where a woman could get a GI bug without it turning out that she was preggers. XKCD does a good job summarizing this: https://www.xkcd.com/1468/.

The sex scenes ALSO brought out my unnecessarily pedantic side. Aside from the spicy foods bit (seriously, ever tried to take your contact out after slicing jalapenos, even if you washed your hands? OW), and accepting that romance novel characters are going to have access to piles and piles of orgasms each time around, I really questioned the "eargasm" moment, rolled my eyes while they conversed about how OHMYGOD HUGE his dick was, and would sometimes have trouble figuring out what positions/angle they were supposed to be in. Wait, you were lying on your back with your head dangling off the bed...I think...and now you're doing what? How is that even...body parts don't line up that way, seems like it would hurt your neck...oh, you moved! I guess. Sometime earlier.

Oh, wait, I've figured out the source of my inner Midwesterner. It was because I was really not that far into the book before I started recalling this hilarious sketch. And although I'm sure there are other MSTies out there who would disagree, it's hard to feel titillated when all the naughty bits are narrated in your mind by Trace Beaulieu's Crow T. Robot. A small golden man read to me from a dirty book, indeed.

So you can probably guess that there's nothing actually WRONG with this book. Maybe people who read more romance would also find the sex scenes confusing, Sophie LastName irritating and Neil Elwood, billionaire mogul, unappealing. But I am not the one to tell you.

a small golden man read to me from a dirty book