A rousing corporate melodrama full of twists, turns, and vivid characters.
A series of vexing work-related conflicts complicate a female executive’s life in journalist-turned-novelist Hanafee’s series opener.
Outspoken, 40-something Leslie Elliott has her hands full as a busy public relations guru for the utility company Metro Energy. Her firm’s new CEO, a womanizing cad named Brad Stewart, embroils Leslie in his lofty plans to merge with Statewide Power and Light, a lucrative utility concern based in the Midwest. With a combination of fear, vulnerability, opportunism, and erotic excitement, Leslie decides to accept Brad’s offer to collaborate with him on his latest venture, though she knows he’s unscrupulous both in and out of the office. When the merger offer is rejected, Brad becomes obsessed with making Leslie his “next conquest,” manipulating her with intimate personal confessions. When Leslie’s curt “control freak” husband, Scott, abruptly files for divorce and begins openly seeing another woman, a shift occurs in her outlook, and she begins to act with carefree liberation. She spontaneously treks back to Florida and begins seeing Tim Fletcher, an older Statewide executive who had refused the initial merger with Brad, but Brad’s pursuit of Leslie continues. When Leslie convinces Tim to attend another meeting with Brad about the proposal, she is caught in the middle of Brad’s unethical hostile takeover plot. These developments complicate her burgeoning feelings for Tim and feed her reluctance to continue supporting Metro altogether.
As the situation unspools, it becomes clear that the crux of Hanafee’s novel lies in power dynamics, as the narrative cleverly addresses hot-button issues of sexual harassment on the job. Leslie becomes uncomfortable around her new boss, allowing his inappropriate behavior to intimidate her while neglecting to report it. She needs her job and initially finds Brad alluring, so she makes excuses and allowances that, in turn, proliferate the abuse. Leslie’s inner monologue reveals that she is tiring of the terse treatment from the men in her life and the double standards in the corporate arena and that she has been working to “find the voice to respond” to the treatment she’s had to endure. A minor weakness of the novel is its unevenly portrayed peripheral characters, such as Leslie’s college-age daughter, Meredith, who is enticingly drawn but sparsely appears in a narrowly focused narrative that could use some opening up. Readers may also want more of Leslie’s charismatic best friend, Karen Chanders, who adds some feisty spice to the melodrama. Despite this, the lead characters are memorable and provide the needed grounding the busy plot requires. With Leslie as an anchoring, empowering element, former Indianapolis Star reporter Hanafee’s novel is a fast-paced, intense depiction of corporate America and the perennial struggle of women seeking equal treatment in the boardroom. This is an auspicious start for an adventurous, creative author.
A rousing corporate melodrama full of twists, turns, and vivid characters.Pub Date: March 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73248-941-7
Page Count: 398
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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