"Hating someone feels disturbingly similar to being in love with them. I've had a lot of time to compare love and hate, and these are my observations."
This book has kind of a "feuding families" concept at the start. Bexley and Gamin were two drastically different publishing companies that merged together, and suffice it to say that the two sides of the company, from workers to the co--CEO's, don't get on. But our focus is on the assistants to the co--CEO's, Lucinda "Lucy" Hutton and Joshua Templeman, who conspicuously hate each other while sharing an office, glaring and staring at each other, pranking and playing mind games, threatening to call HR, and other things that I'm surprised haven't hurt their careers more because it's a bit above what one can reasonably get away with at work.* They spend a lot of time fixating on each other...er, one way or the other. Ahem.
- Speaking as someone who shares an office with people who despise me, I do not recommend this behavior. I literally just don't speak to them unless I absolutely have to and vice versa. If you are in a situation like this, don't be acting like Lucy and Joshua at work. Then again...it's fiction.
When the co-CEOs announce a new position which the two of them would be up for--and the winner gets to be the other's boss- both of them say they'll quit if the other one wins. This means war, right? Heck, it means literally having office paintball (Joshua's winning idea) as an office bonding event. When Lucy develops some interest in Danny, a departing designer, Joshua is soooo not happy about that, enough to want to track her down on the date.
I'll admit, I think the transition between the "I totally hate you" and "Um, no, I don't hate you at all" is a bit awkward. It's fairly surprising that after Lucy falls whoppingly ill after the paintball game, Joshua drops everything to take care of her and even drags his perfect doctor brother in for a housecall. But suffice it to say that after the awkward period, things improve very nicely from there, and you can reasonably assume that Joshua has had a secret crush all along. Really, that dude is waaaaaaaaaaay too obsessed with the fact that Lucy's parents run a strawberry farm and even reads her mom's farm blog. Lord knows I've been obsessed with dudes in the long past but I don't think I would ever go that far :p (I also cracked up at the explanation of Josh's secret marks in his planner. "When you get so little of someone, you take what you can get.") They get quite endearing after a while and things get sexy in a teasing sort of way long before things go further. The book makes it work. But as for their work situation.... yeah, that's a last minute save there.
And toward the end, Lucy goes along with Joshua to his brother's wedding. You will figure out long before Lucy does the uh, surprise soap opera twist about that wedding, but on the other hand, I think the situation with Joshua's dad utterly disapproving of him was handled well, especially when Lucy steps up about it. I liked how Joshua's mom noted that both guys aren't easy men to deal with and how it takes someone strong to deal with Josh. It was sweet.
Overall, I think this was pretty well done as a feud-to-romance story and if you're into that, I recommend it. Four stars.
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