THE PLAN
An Adult Contemporary Romance
By Qwen Salsbury
Published by Omnific Publishing
Released February 2014
Purchase Links
Synopsis:
Day of Employment: 359
11:05 a.m.
Location: Cubicles outside Canon’s office.
Co-workers: Betting on how long Canon’s new PA will last.
Me: No doubts. Ms. Gum-smacker won’t last the day. I need to place my bet.
Manolo Blahnik’s New Fall Shoes: Mine. As soon as Madeline hands over my winnings.
Emma Baker has never spoken a word to Alaric Canon, nor has he to her. But she’s studied him every day across the office tundra for almost a year. Canon is hard and fierce, terrifying and beautiful. He’s also the most stern, unforgiving person Emma has ever seen. Emma’s co-workers run a betting pool for Personal Assistant terminations. There’s a separate pot for the day one leaves without crying. Not likely…Canon made a former Navy SEAL cry.
He has high standards and low tolerance. Everyone knows it. Everyone stays away. Everyone who can, that is. Except Emma. She can’t look away. Alaric Canon is the single most attractive man she’s ever seen. Bar none.
Canon has never noticed her. Not once in almost a year. She’s not even a blip on his radar. But she will be. His radar will be blipless no more.
It is a goal. Emma has a plan.
Review
I read this funny, very sexy, smart and very unique book in one sitting. The writing style is very different and fresh, written mostly in the form of diary entries. Emma is a smart and ambitious corporate employee and becomes personal assistant to the imposing Alaric Canon, who has burned through so many PA’s that he is the subject of office betting pools. The jerk-y boss/subservient assistant has been done before, but never like this! Emma has a plan to get Alaric to notice her but he is perpetually challenging and sets standards that are basically impossible for his assistants to meet. Emma’s inner monologue is hilarious, as she deals with his demanding and dominating personality:
Life’s a bitch, and she has several sisters.
This girl has a plan to get Alaric to notice her, but her best-laid plans go wildly awry when the two take a tension-filled business trip and basically spend 24/7 together. Emma rises to Alaric’s challenges time after time, and I absolutely loved the slow build-up to their incredible sexy times together:
“Denim in long expanses. Barely contours to his thighs. Thighs I have leaned against but not touched. Bare feet.
Barefoot! Put some shoes on, already! How am I supposed to look unaffected and asexual
with all this unfair fuckery happening?”
Emma is completely self-deprecating and really holds no illusions about the possibilities of a relationship with Alaric. I mean, he is rarely seen with the same woman twice.
“God, I’m not in just in the neighborhood of pathetic, I’m circling the block.”
Alaric really grows and develops and begins to show a more human side and I loved that he was not just a one-dimensional character. My heart was literally in my throat by the end of the book. Qwen’s writing style is incredibly fresh and unique and is a most welcome addition to the contemporary erotic romance genre. I adored the conclusion and I am demanding more from this author!
(ARC provided by the publisher in return for an honest review.)
About the Author
Qwen Salsbury was born in Kansas and somehow keeps ending up back there. Raised on her grandparent’s five acre homestead within the city limits, her imagination was honed during long days of quiet play and spartan access to a TV signal. Now mother to handsome boys, she strives to ensure they appreciate potential adventures found within the pages of a book, an honest day’s work, and what ingenuity may yield from mundane objects like a string and a cup. The boys prefer a PS3.
After spending time in corporate America, she returned to school and received a BA in English, Creative Writing and Poetry from Pittsburg State University, the alma mater of Pulitzer Prize winning poet, James Tate. She worked on a Masters there until going on to receive a juris doctorate from Washburn School of Law.
A seven-time Sigma Tau Delta writing award winner, her fiction and poetry have appeared in literary magazines and have been selected by fiction communities as featured story of the month and year. Predominantly a writer of romance, her romantic fiction varies from contemporary to historical to fantasy, though often with a humorous slant and poetic undertones.
For reasons she can’t even articulate herself, she decided to start writing fiction again while solo parenting and attending law school (during Constitutional Law class, to be exact.).