Saving the CEO by Jenny Holiday

Saving the CEO by Jenny Holidaythree-half-stars

Saving the CEO Series: 49th Floor #1
on October 20, 2014
Pages: 253

I received this book for free from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This book may be unsuitable for people under 18 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence.
Add to Goodreads

Amazon Purchase~|~Barnes and Noble Purchase

If you buy this book using the Amazon link, I will receive a small commission from the sale as an Amazon affiliate. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Synopsis

Real estate mogul Jack Winter has rules. Lots of rules. After all, a man doesn’t build an empire without a little discipline. And on page one of the rulebook? Don’t sleep with your employees. Especially when there’s a multimillion dollar real estate deal at stake...

Luckily for Jack, Cassie James isn’t really his employee. She’s a hot bartender who just happens to be the math genius he needs, and if they share a wicked chemistry? Well, that's just a sexy little perk. So they strike a deal: Cassie helps Jack with the merger. And until the deal goes through at Christmas, they can indulge every sexy little impulse they desire. But the more rules Jack makes, the more he seems to break...

My Review

3.5 Scorching Stars!

It’s taking everything in me NOT to say “for a debut novel.” So let me go on not saying that.

I truly enjoyed this book. I loved that Cassie was not a perfect ballerina, but instead was an attractive, curvy, smart woman struggling her way through college and supporting her loser mother with a bartending job. Jack was a loner. By the time we got around to meeting all the people around him, I found it hard to believe he was still alone in his thirties, even working as hard as he does. He had enough time to turn friends into family, so why not a woman?

The chemistry between these two was scorching hot. I really liked the sexy times they shared. I liked the misunderstanding that was set up for us for the climax of the story.

There were two glaring plot and character problems that caused me to slash a star from the total.

  1. Scotch … really? I had a hard time believing that a college girl with a limited income and an alcoholic mother was a scotch connoisseur. As a bartender in a class establishment, I could see how she would have known the best way to serve it, not because of taste, but because she was well-trained.
  2. Pasta swears? What? These were mentioned throughout the book, and were even discussed in the Acknowledgements. What are pasta swears? I did not notice one being used, tried to search with my Kindle, and searched my memory for ANYTHING. I got nothing. WHAT is a pasta swear? I don’t get it.

Oh, and I did not think Junior said anything smarmy enough to warrant the texts to Cassie’s gay bestie. I didn’t get the feeling Junior was being sexual when he said to say his name. He seemed more like a whimpering little boy who knew he would never be good enough. So, I guess that makes it three problems and 3.5 stars.

Overall, it IS a good debut novel. Okay, I said it. I would buy another book by this author. She has marvelous ideas for future books. I’m sure of it.

three-half-stars

About Jenny Holiday

Jenny Holiday started writing in fourth grade, when her awesome hippie teacher, between sessions of Pete Seeger singing and anti-nuclear power plant letter writing, gave the kids notebooks and told them to write stories. Most of Jenny’s featured poltergeist, alien invasions, or serial killers who managed to murder everyone except her and her mom. She showed early promise as a romance writer, though, because nearly every story had a happy ending: fictional Jenny woke up to find that the story had been a dream, and that her best friend, father, and sister had not, in fact, been axe-murdered.

From then on, she was always writing, often in her diary, where she liked to decorate her declarations of existential angst with nail polish teardrops. Eventually she channelled her penchant for scribbling into a more useful format. After picking up a PhD in urban geography, she became a professional writer, spending many years promoting research at a major university, which allowed her to become an armchair astronomer/historian/particle physicist, depending on the day. Eventually, she decided to try her hand again at happy endings–minus the bloodbaths.

Leave a Reply

(Enter your URL then click here to include a link to one of your blog posts.)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.