DNF Round-up: Nothing Personal and Bad Ideas

Nothing Personal by Karina Halle
Published by Independently Published on December 28, 2018
Pages: 288
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It's just business, nothing personal...until your ex becomes your new boss.Nova Lane is having the worst week ever. ✔️Her latest relationship? Ended while on her much-needed vacation. ✔️First day back at work? Her beloved boss has quit. ✔️And despite all her hard work? She's not being considered for his position.The one who is being considered is none other than Kessler Rocha. ✔️Her ex-coworker and ex-lover. ✔️The man who broke her heart five years earlier. ✔️The reason she moved thousands of miles away, switched jobs, and created numerous voodoo dolls in Kessler's (very burly, very handsome) likeness.In the corporate world they say it's just business, nothing personal.But with their history and all this delicious new sexual tension, Nova and Kessler are about to show just how personal things can get.NOTHING PERSONAL is a sweet, sexy & hilarious STANDALONE ROMANCE with a single dad, enemies-to-lovers, second-chance office romance twist, from the NYT & USA Today Bestselling Author of A Nordic King and Bad at Love. Expect raunchy talk, swearing, graphic sex scenes and all sorts of fun.

Hoooooly deja vu. Shall I compare thee to Heat Wave? Yes, yes I shall. A second chance/hate-to-love romance set in a hotel in Hawaii. Heroine falls in love with her boss who is super off limits. Heroine has a dead sister – majorly harsh dude. Hero and Heroine have hot and forbidden sexy times and somehow live happily ever after despite their past and heaps of problems.

Major differences: Hero has a kid. Hero was never married to anyone in the Heroine’s family…I mean why even bother then, am I right?

I think the title just about sums this one up for me. Nothing personal, but nope, not falling for this line up again.

*****

Bad Ideas by Missy Marston
Published by ECW Press on April 23, 2019
Pages: 224
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Wildly funny and wonderfully moving, Bad Ideas is about just that -- a string of bad ideas -- and the absurdity of love.

Trudy works nights in a linen factory, avoiding romance and sharing the care of her four-year-old niece with Trudy's mother, Claire. Claire still pines for Trudy's father, a St. Lawrence Seaway construction worker who left her 20 years ago. Claire believes in true love. Trudy does not. She's keeping herself to herself. But when Jules Tremblay, aspiring daredevil, walks into the Jubilee restaurant, Trudy's a goner.

Loosely inspired by Ken "the Crazy Canuck" Carter's attempt to jump the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car, and set in a 1970s hollowed-out town in eastern Ontario, Bad Ideas paints an indelible portrait of people on the forgotten fringes of life. Witty and wise, this is a novel that will stay with you a long time.

It is rare that I find writing style so distracting that I can’t power through, but unfortunately Missy Marston’s Bad Ideas falls into that bucket. I couldn’t connect with the story, style or the sense of humor, so I’m flagging this as “life is too short” and moving along.

XOXO