Review: Fun, fast, fairy-tale-ish
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 1, 2013
This review also posted on Red Hot Books.You guys can have all the tough, silent Alpha men with their protectiveness and dominance. I'll just keep all the lean geeky Beta boys to myself, okay?This is a pretty short book, probably qualifying as a novella, about Michelle and Sark. Michelle has just moved to Chicago from her small town in Illinois because she's tired of her mom telling her to get back together with her ex-boyfriend, and she wants more out of life than working at WalMart under the supervision of her high school nemesis.Sark is the founder and CEO of a tech company, the whiz kid who made it big. His company went public and now he has to answer to shareholders when he'd rather be tinkering with code and mountain biking. His real name is Noah, but his RPG name is Sark, and that's what his friends call him.When Sark is wandering through the office one evening, he sees Michelle having trouble with her printer. She's just started in his call center even though she seems to know nothing about technology. She doesn't recognize him as the CEO, which is of course a turn-on for him. He walks her home, then asks her out.Michelle is almost the dumbest person in the universe. Sark leaves her a note on her desk, explaining that he's really Noah, but she misinterprets it as a letter from the CEO apologizing for outsourcing her job to a call center overseas. So she keeps dating Sark, and he thinks she knows who he is, while she remains ignorant. He suggests she try to get a job in the marketing department, and then he kind of makes it happen, but she doesn't think it's strange to land a job that usually requires a college degree and experience.Their interactions are cute, although a lot of the dialogue is summarized as, "they had great conversation for hours." But I bought their relationship, it was very sweet and supportive. And Michelle, clueless as she is, does take the initiative to learn more about the job and take night courses at college so that she can be more qualified.I enjoyed the ending, where Sark gets advice from his mom, his teenaged cousin, and a roadtripping older couple. He's rambling and insecure and madly in love.Overall, it was too short! But fun and fast and fairy-tale-ish, with one steamy bit in the middle. A necessary read for geek lovers.Grade: B+