I bring you tidings of non-rage inducing romance writing!
Aw, yeah! We're gettin' into the home stretch, folks! First chapter will be up for your enjoyment in just five days!
Unless you're me. Then you get to read it in the waiting room of the student health clinic. Bwahahaha~. Fortunately, I shall share the fruits of my time with you, gentle flist. Because I think this is something a lot of you would enjoy very much.
Okay, so. Chapter 1 spans 16 pages, according to my Kindle Fire. It was a very quick read, but not in a bad way. I won't call it a page turner right out of the gate, but I was turning pages, and I made a frowny face and kept trying to flip pages after my Fire told me I'd reached the end.
I'm not sure how much of my enjoyment stems from the fact that the author mentioned she had Anthony Head in mind when writing the male lead, so I'll try to keep that off to the side. Even if it did help get my attention.
First and foremost, you'll all be happy to know that the heroine is immediately and noticeably more likeable than Anastasia Rose Steele. For one thing, she actually cares about having a job and is grateful for having a job in a turbulent industry (fashion) in a bad economy. Yeah, she's a personal assistant, but damn it, she is a good and devoted personal assistant! So when the chapter opens with her boss supposedly having been fired, I did feel for her freaking out and wondering what's going to happen to her. Under high pressure and stress, she does her best to be professional and polite, which is something I've always struggled with. So, props to Sophie.
Physical description of Sophie lasts a sentence and is thankfully not touched on beyond that. Physical descriptions of Holli and Neil get worked in a bit more throughout the text, but at least in Holli's case, Trout is clever about it.
There is also already so much more less female hate. It is stunning, how little women hating women there is. Hell, this sucker has already passed the Bechdel Test - the main character, Sophie, and her friend, Holli, touch base a few pages in to talk about and wonder what's happening with the company. And you can tell that Sophie actually does like Holli, and Holli does like Sophie. My God, I really hope that keeps up. Even when they did put their heads together about the male lead, the tone was just so...companionable, rather than jealous. I really hope Holli sticks around. Sophie is good humored about the fact that Holli is a model, and Holli is remarkably down to earth for being the best friend.
Sophie doesn't even muster up much hate towards her psychotic old boss. Hell, turns out she actually liked her psychotic old boss and all her specific tastes - which I can sympathize with, as it does make it so much easier to do your job - and the closest thing she comes to jealousy of another female is a co-worker that doesn't show up to work, thinking that maybe her psychotic old boss tipped her off and not Sophie.
We did get to see the male lead - Neil Elwood - pretty soon, when he moves in to replace Sophie's old boss (geddit? Geddit?). The story is that he and Sophie had sex six years ago while she was waiting for a flight to Tokyo. She'd been planning to abandon all her plans to go to NYU and start fresh there. They have a night of wild, crazy sex, and Sophie wakes up to find her plane ticket gone and four thousand dollars wrapped in a note advising her to catch the next flight to New York. Even if Sophie's life has apparently been pretty good since, she is pissy about that.
While I can understand that, I also find myself in the weird position of agreeing with the Alpha Male lead >_> . Like, okay, on the one hand, it is your life. On the other hand, you were goddamn eighteen years old at the time, and we hear no mention of what she had waiting for her in Tokyo. We might later, though, in which case I will swing right over to Sophie's side being pissed about it. While she's made good use of her NY opportunities, if she had something or someone waiting for her in Tokyo, that is not okay.
But, we don't know either way, so I'm withholding judgment. Neil also seems remarkably not like an asshole. I mean, all of their interactions did take place within a company full of panicking workers, so any businessman with any sense wouldn't be an asshole to the employees. But he's very low maintenance in terms of needing an assistant, it seems, and he seems to be a patient, polite kind of guy otherwise. He gives Sophie his sympathies about her problematic situation, being an assistant with no boss, and says that after she trains up her replacement, they'll find her something else within the company so she won't be homeless and unable to pay rent. Sophie actually does care about paying rent, by the way.
When Sophie gets antsy about him not telling her what to do down to the condiments in terms of getting him lunch, he does come out and say "While I am going to be particular about your work, I'm not going to fire you for bringing me the wrong sort of bagel." He also paused on the phone to thank her for bringing in the bagels.
Which I thought was actually kind of d'awww, which should be a very bad sign as to how far our idea of "romance" has fallen.
Even so, as someone with an anxiety disorder, I could appreciate working for a guy who wouldn't expect me to read his mind. Even if I could also sympathize with Sophie getting annoyed about it, since in a lot of ways it is less stressful for you to do your job if your boss is picky.
I know, I'm sympathizing with everyone besides the jerkass opera costume designer. Wacky, huh? We'll see how Neil holds up elsewhere and outside the office environment, but I'm hopeful, and having seen Sophie outside the office environment - even if only to have a quick coffee break with Holli - I think I am going to be right along with her for the forseeable future.
I think I can also already buy these two in a D/s BDSM relationship more than I could Ana or Christian. Sophie's thing is that she likes people to be particular with her, because then she knows exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. Seems to me way more suited to a sub than someone who just instinctively agrees or can't say no. Neil does seem to have some control-freak type tendencies, but they're not all consuming, and they're tempered with patience and at least some consideration.
Overall, the writing was quick and, at times, clever enough to get a laugh out of me. I am very much looking forward to Chapter 2, and to when Chapter 1 goes live Monday or Tuesday, so all of you can tell me how you thought it was, too! I'll post a link when it goes live, then, so you won't have to poke around too much.
This entry was originally posted at http://hickumu.dreamwidth.org/115490.html. Please comment there using OpenID.