Fluffy but not. Huggable characters.

Got this book because of a personal rec & the cocky kerfuffle sent me on a shopping trip for spite ?. The narrator and author’s notes might be the best parts, though. For a book intended to be a bit fluffy, there is heavy emotion (parent in hospice). And it was pretty good but.

I kinda want to give a pass on business details because specificity wasn’t the point. But I was distracted by every work scene. When Ash googled info instead of asking an in-house VP or lawyer to provide a summary? Ugh. I am also personally irritated by boys inheriting controlling interests in corporations even when they are not groomed to run them. Especially publicly traded companies who should have better org charts with realistic lines of succession in place. So while the “I’m in over my head & I need help” meet cute worked to get him hooked up with Brand, Ash was SO FAR underwater already that he was staying underwater. Everything about him flailing at work then hiring a total stranger to help him at home but who then shows up in his office every day without a peep from HR or the BoD or even his admin? Just every possible no. This interfered with my ability to enjoy the story. BUT if one can set their “suspension of disbelief” to the job, it could work. I tried but couldn’t.

This romance almost worked for me. I could believe in Brand’s caretaking. I could see Ash wanting/needing caretaking. I could even see Brand’s particular desires working out, mostly. But. The trust needed to get from ‘intro’ to ‘all in’ felt a little too rushed. Even with the rush, I didn’t see enough the ‘boss by day, sub by night’ dynamic I came for. I wanted to see more expression of the kink in daily life and the boudoir, not just a description of it and the first tentative forays into it. Plot happened and the dynamic went wonky. It wasn’t wrong for the characters, it just wasn’t enough for me. I felt like I was set up to anticipate some scenes. I only got one that was almost there. Actually, one bit was wrong and that was when Brand made a decision without discussing it first with Ash. (Getting info on the sly wasn’t wrong. Moving forward with the info on the sly was wrong.) That’s infantilizing, not caretaking. There was explicit sex on the page but the sec arc was slightly out of synch with the narrative/kink arc.

Then the familial relationship. Ash & his dad existed in different orbits that occasionally crossed. They started to attempt to get to know each other more but then his mom swooped in and derailed that and it never (explicitly) came back. I think he only talked with his dad on page once after that, and the discussion was started by Brand. It was weird – there were all the things they could talk about! They just didn’t. Again, the set up felt mismatched to how it played out.

The narrator didn’t do a british accent and I was fine with that. The Japanese-ish accent was a maybe. Even so, it was easy to listen to and the audio quality was good.

Why am I even saying anything? Even with all the problems, I felt the characters come to life. I wanted to hang out with them. I wanted them to have fun, be healthy, and be happy. I listened all the way to the end. Some authors can get all kinds of environmental detail right and fail to draw me in to their characters. This author elided many details yet got me right in the feels. I sometimes wish I could send back a request for modifications to make the story work better for me because there’s something in it to love. This is one of those.