Susanna Carr

Okay, so before you come for me, hear me out!

This book was written and released ages ago and has since been taken off shelves. It was insanely hard for me to find copies in thrift stores let alone out in the wild at a library. HOWEVER, it is one of the first rom-com books I ever read and it delights me to no end to read and re-read it every single year! The blurbs I found online about it don't do it justice and I'm here to tell you about it!

Okay so our girl Molly is down to her last buck. show more She fell on some hard times when her ex-boyfriend literally cleaned her out and so she is living hard paycheck to paycheck and just hoping for a bonus. She works as a secretary for an up and coming tech company (think Instagram early days) and she does her job well, but she's very worried about what people think so she has an elaborate system of stretching her buck to make her clothes not give her away. When you work with wealthy people, you gotta embody the attitude and Molly does her best. Molly gets evicted (thanks to her stupid ex) and has enough money to rent a box truck and put all her belongings inside. It's an insane balancing act that she has trying to work hard and keep up appearances and yet not spend more than she can make.

Kyle is out super handsome tech genius and head of the company. He and his best friends started the company and they are so close to selling off a big idea of theirs that they are developing, however there is some shady stuff underfoot. Someone is committing corporate espionage and trying to throw them under the bus before they make the big payday. Is it his head of security that can't keep his hands off any female he passes? Is it his head of development that is rumored to be looking to leave and start her own company? Is it the person who is rumored to have written a tell-all book about him behind his back? Or could it be the beautiful but slightly shifty secretary that he wants? The suspicion is high with Kyle and while he finds himself falling for Molly, he can't help worry that she's the one stabbing him in the back.

The romance between Kyle and Molly has the grumpy/sunshine and enemies to lovers.
In true rom-com fashion there are so many miscommunications and crossed signals. It's such a delightful read and the ending...oh the ending is SO GOOD!!

I would definitely recommend it as a read if you can find it. I would love to see it re-edited and revamped for the more modern age, but I really love it as is.
10/10 show less

The back cover copy of this book was what initially piqued my interest. Well, enough so that I decided to flip open the book and read the first few pages. The voice intrigued me even more, so I decided to go ahead and pick this one up.

The thing I like about Brava's contemporary romances is that they're not only steamy but they're also sassy. They're borderline chick lit--at least in tone.

The thing I don't like about Brava's contemporary romances is that they seem to be the "minor league show more players" of the publishing industry. Sure, they're good enough to get published and play on a professional level, and they might even get called up to the majors at some point. But for the most part, they're a cheap, fun read that you enjoy on a Saturday afternoon when you have nothing else to do, but they're not a team you'll follow for life.

What I mean by that is that Lip Lock was enjoyable, but I'm not sure it's something I would ever place on my keeper shelf. The characters were all likable, the premise was good, and the voice was enjoyable. There were a few laugh out loud moments, which is always a huge plus with me.

The premise is this: Molly is barely scraping by. Her clothes are borrowed. Her rent's late. Then she gets evicted and ends up living out of a rental truck (as in a U-Haul) that has all of her stuff in it. When the truck gets towed one day while she's at work, she has nothing but the clothes on her back, nowhere to stay and virtually no money.

Kyle is Molly's boss. A big-time software developer in Seattle, Kyle's built his business from the ground-up, which hasn't left him much time for personal relationships. He's undeniably attracted to Molly, but something about her doesn't sit right with him.

When a set of blueprints for a new piece of software the company's developing comes up missing, Kyle and his executive staff set out to find the person who stole them. One of the software developers points the finger of blame towards Molly, who (unbeknownst to Kyle) has been sleeping in the office since her truck was towed. Kyle fires Molly, despite the fact that his gut's telling him she had nothing to do with the crime.

With nowhere to go, Molly decides to camp out at one of Kyle's many houses, this on an island off the coast of Seattle that she'd learned about as Kyle's receptionist. Things are going well for Molly until Kyle shows up, with two guests in tow. Molly tries to exit the house before she's caught, but no dice. Since the guests are actually clients Kyle is hoping to woo, he decides that pretending he and Molly are engaged would probably look better than telling them the truth (because, seriously, how do you explain the fact that your ex-receptionist, whom you'd fired for espionage, is living in your house without you knowing about it?). Of course, all this serves to do is throw Kyle and Molly together and put them in close proximity away from the office. And of course, the tension builds.

Eventually, Molly is exonerated and the real culprit is caught, leaving Kyle free to be with Molly.

Carr does a great job with the sexual tension between Molly and Kyle, including one fantastic scene before she gets fired where she's crawling on the floor of his office bathroom as he's taking a shower (trust me, it's hilarious and yet builds the tension at the same time). So when they do finally get around to doing the hibbity-dibbity, it's of course explosive. And since Brava's romances also tend to veer towards the sexy if not erotic side, that isn't a big surprise.

However, I did have issues with both Molly and Kyle's characters--mainly that they both seemed very naive for their ages and positions in life. Before she gets fired, Molly's waiting for her review so she can get a raise. We've all been there, on pins and needles waiting for the review and to find out how much (if any) of a raise we got. And considering her financial woes, it's obvious that every little bit extra would help. But the fact that she's hinging hopes and dreams on a three percent raise is a little unrealistic. A quick search on Monster.com shows that the median salary for an Administrative Assistant is $38,667. So a three percent raise would equal an extra $1160.01 a year before taxes. Say she's getting paid semi-monthly, that comes out to an extra $48.33 per paycheck (again, before taxes). Call me crazy, but an extra forty-eight bucks a paycheck isn't going to allow one to do all of the things Molly's planning on doing with the extra money. She keeps thinking of the raise as the answer to all of her financial woes, when in fact it's more of a teeny tiny cushion than anything else. A realistic person does the math and thinks, "Okay, I can afford groceries now" rather than "This three percent raise is going to allow me to pay off my medical bills, get out of debt, find an apartment, and other things in virtually one fell swoop." If she couldn't make it before on her salary, an extra forty-eight bucks a paycheck isn't going to make much of a difference.

Kyle, on the other hand, is way too trusting of Molly. She's a liar. She doesn't necessarily mean to lie, and none of her lies are harmful (they're more of the keeping-her-head-above-water variety), but Kyle gets the sense she's lying to him and yet still chooses to trust her just because he's attracted to her. She's in the company gym at like 6 a.m. one morning, and he thinks it odd but doesn't think much of it beyond that. When he catches her in his executive bathroom one night, he covers for her with her direct boss (who's his executive assistant). All because he's physically attracted to her, because he sure as hell doesn't know anything about her. And ultimately it's his trusting nature that proves to be his Achilles' heel when he finds out towards the end of the book that one of his long-time friends (and executive staff members) is the one behind the blueprint espionage. Yes, the idea of being able to trust your partners and executive staff is a nice one, and one most CEOs would hope they could believe in. But in the world of software development--especially the extremely cutting-edge software Kyle's company develops--you can never be too careful about who you trust. Plus, there's the fact that the only people that had access to the blueprints were the executive staff and two programmers. He should have suspected them rather than Molly, who had no access to the blueprints whatsoever.

Other than the things I listed above, this was a decent book. Like I said, it was a fun, quick, easy read, but certainly nothing I'll put on my keeper shelf. show less

A Deal with Benefits by Susanna Carr is a page-turning angst fest of attraction, passion and past mistakes. Holy cow! The last few chapters had me in a vice grip while I waited to see the outcome of this romance!

Ashley has been essentialy hiding for the past five years after her parents tragic deaths. Her island home is a vacation getaway for the wealthy and privacy seeking, but business is not good. She's behind on her loan payment and is out of ideas of what to do to save her island. The show more latest guest arrives and she is immediately attracted to this man. She is petrified of what these strong emotions will mean for her and her resolve to NOT be like her mother.

Sebastian, the attractive guest, is there to scope out the island. He wants to buy it and the owner is NOT selling. What he doesn't expect when he lands on Inez Key is to be so overwhelmingly attracted to the owner, Ashley. Despite his attraction to her he has plans in place and he WILL get the island. His only concern now is if he can also get Ashley or has he ruined that relationship beyond repair.

A VERY good book. WOW! show less

This is a very nice effort by a debut HP author. It felt fresh and new. The sheikh actually acted as if he were a person from another culture in that he denied the heroine the right to a further education and etc. He wasn't really an ass though and he fell for her pretty rapidly. Also she wasn't a virgin and her circumstances were realistic. How many young women have been used and lied to just to get them in bed? The plot was pretty tight and the focus of the story was fairly firmly on the show more couple. There were one or two quibbles but they may not have bothered other people. How did the sheikh know immediately who she was when he saw her at the wedding? Why would the future ruler of a country know that in this village there was an orphaned half American girl who was an outcast? It didn't seem realistic. On the whole though very well done and I'm looking forward to reading more by this new HP author. show less