Day 12
Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: Business or Pleasure
SERIES: Dreamspinner Advent Calendar 2014 Celebrate
AUTHOR: Michael Cross and Emma Michaels
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 36 pages
BLURB:
When American Ian lands a secretarial job in the United Kingdom, he thinks he’s set for life. Admittedly, he’s still a bachelor living in a small apartment and working for a complete jackass, but other than that, his life is everything he ever hoped for in an enticing city full of beautiful people. When Alistair Security is robbed during the Christmas Fundraiser, the last thing Ian expects is to end up locked in with his boss, Alex Alistair, and to realize he might have mistaken his resentment for something else. The two men find common ground throughout the night, but when morning comes and the news hits the headlines, their connection will be tested. Ian might find himself at the start of a hot office romance—or he’ll spend the holidays browsing the classifieds.
REVIEW:
Being trapped in a room with Alex Alistair is the last thing that Ian wants for Christmas…or any other holiday, to be honest. He may have to work for the man most of the year, but Ian has to restrain himself from throwing office supplies at the douche’s head on a good day. Throw in the fact that someone seems intent on breaking into their company’s computers–so have locked them into their office together with no food and no way to contact the rest of humanity–and it will be a miracle if they don’t kill each other before the bad guys get to it first.
This was not my favorite of the Christmas anthology, I’ll admit. I wanted to like it, the blurb made it sound really interesting, and I love trapped-together stories where the guys have to word thru their mutual dislike to survive and/or fall in love. And it takes place in Britain so that is an automatic happy place for me. But…
This story made no sense. It honestly felt like it took all the elements of a bad spy movie and failed to put them together in a coherent structure (even if I’m going to buy that they had vent ducts big enough for grown men to crawl around in, and that these vents could sustain the weight of two grown men, do they only go from the dude’s office to the roof and back? Like why didn’t they just crawl to a different office, and escape thru there?).
I didn’t get why Ian would touch Alex with anything shorter than a ten foot pole after everything they have been thru since they met. Especially since Alex was engaged (and perfectly happy to still stick his dick into anything female on two legs). Alex is a totally douche. Ian totally thought Alex was a total douche. And then…? They look at each other on the roof and suddenly Ian is totally fine making out with the douche, and straight Alex is totally find making out with a dude. Then, next day, Alex is back to being a douche. The douchness doth runneth over for the dude, and I can’t see why Ian sees anything worth redemption in the man.
And that’s the kicker. If you are going to sell me this highly improbable story, you have to at least sell me that Ian sees something worth keeping in Alex (even if I can never find it myself), and the authors just didn’t pull that off. At all. So that compounded with the technical things I just found ludicrous, made this a hard, and ultimately failed, sale.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Thank you for the review!
Great review. Thank you for it =)