Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Message Received
SERIES: Sloan Brothers
AUTHOR: D.K. Sutton
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 325 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2023
BLURB:
First rule of keeping your job? Don’t hit on your boss.
Ben Pierce always follows the rules. Keeping everything and everyone in their place. But his newest employee, Sean Miller, doesn’t fit into his neat little boxes or his neat little life. The man is irritating, impulsive, and impossibly gorgeous. But most troubling of all, he has Ben wondering what it’d be like to let someone else take charge.
After hopping from place to place, Sean Miller finds a job he wants to keep. Or rather, one his roommate wants him to keep. Helping his friend through this difficult time is the most important thing. So for now, Sean has to play nice at his new job. No flirting with his boss. No touching his boss. No showing his uptight and yummy boss the joys of surrendering to the right person.
And absolutely no falling for this surprisingly sweet and vulnerable man. That might be the hardest rule of all not to break because finding the one person who fits you perfectly might be worth risking everything.
Message Received is an 86,000+ words, opposites attract, boss/employee novel with an HEA. It’s part of the Sloan Brothers series but can be read as a standalone.
REVIEW:
Note: This is part of a series, but I didn’t read the first one and this totally works as a standalone.
Ben is a guys who always has a plan and follows the rules. His last boyfriend dumped him because he was too rigid, too controlled and not enough “fun” as it were. Sadly that ex is someone he still has to work with. Only his assistant knows about their relationship and what a toll it took and is still taking on Ben. Ben has OCD and his anxiety is kicked up a notch by the pressure on him at his job as a supervisor at a call center. Then there is his younger brother Roan, who is another issue altogether, and has been his responsibility for a very long time.
He has an unexpected encounter with a guy at his normal coffee shop the day his new recruits are to start. Ben is stunned to see this guy as one of his new employees with a totally different name than he used at the coffee shop. Sean Miller is far from the Xavier he met earlier. There is something there though. Sean has Ben’s number from the get-go. He can see that this buttoned-up rule follower needs somebody else to take the lead and get him out of his head. But fraternizing with the boss is not allowed. Also he needs to keep this job. He’s living with his bestie Brock. He’s got obligations that he needs to meet and he needs this job to get that done.
Ben has been called into the big boss, Mr. Odell’s office. Never a good sign, Mr. Odell tells him he needs to make sure they don’t lose any of this new group of new hires. Ben can’t micromanage them and he needs to figure out how to nip this attrition in the bud. No pressure 😉 His ex, Joel, one of the other supervisors, loves to push Ben’s buttons. Matthew, Ben’s assistant does his best to run interference for Ben, but Joel and Ben are going to have to work together to meet Mr. Odell’s expectations. Joel is a competitive guy and wants nothing more than to win with the added bonus of making Ben’s life a living hell. But Sean and Matthew aren’t about to let this happen. Surprisingly Sean wants to keep this job and he wants Ben to succeed as well. Keeping his feelings on the DL is pretty difficult and Ben isn’t much better to be honest. How they are going to keep this from Joel and the rest of the team is going to take a miracle.
Meanwhile both Ben and Sean are working through stuff in their personal lives. Both have family drama to contend with. Both have responsibilities to others than that they can’t shirk. Keeping their eye on the prize at work as well as trying to figure out what is going on between them take a lot of effort from both guys.
As Ben and Joel’s two teams begin to work together, there is a long plot about a potential mole amongst the ranks. One of the other new hires, Jazmine, came from a competitor and she’s got and inside contact that tells her that someone is stealing secrets and sharing them with that competitor. She swears Sean to secrecy while they try to ferret out who the traitor is. But then the spotlight is put on Sean as the leak and while he does have an alibi, it’s not one he can share with risk to everything he’s been working for. Ben sticks up for him, but Sean doesn’t want to jeopardize either of their jobs. If they can figure out a way to get the real culprit to confess, well maybe they have a shot at more.
This was a good story with a lot of things going for it – opposites attract, forbidden relationship, meet cute, a bit angsty with kid with cancer, responsible brother/irresponsible brother, etc. Sadly it could have done with another round of edits. It’s a bit long and slow in places that I wish had been tightened up because I did really like the whole slow burn/temptation of the forbidden aspect. Unfortunately the corporate espionage/pitting boss against his former boyfriend who ridicules him story just dragged things out too long. It’s the Coco Chanel rule here – take one thing off. There were too many subplots that took away from the main story. That being said, I really did like the dynamic between Sean and Ben. From their very first encounter, there is something there. They are opposites in so many ways. Ben lives for rules. He’s been through a lot and his response has been to keep order so that he can have a sense of control and not fall apart. When he’s stressed, he gets headaches. And he’s getting stressed a lot. His boss is on him to not lose any more new recruits. His ex is the bane of his existence – trying to undermine him and throw him off at every turn, despite having been the one to break things off telling him he was not any fun at all with all his rule following and planning. Turns out having rules does work for some things 😉 There are some great supporting characters in Ben’s boss, his assistant Matthew, his brother Roan and Sean’s best friend/roommate Brock. Sean’s got his own baggage from his family too and maybe together they check these bags and go!
RATING: 
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