Review: As a romance book, thumbs down. As Chick Lit - thumbs up!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 5, 2014
This book jumped out and grabbed me right away. I knew from the first few paragraphs this was going to be a book I'd enjoy. Rebecca just jumped out of the pages with her personality. But the more I read the more I realized this book has been wrongly categorized. Petty Cash is more chick lit than office romance. A romance book should have the romance driving the story. Instead this book was geared more to Rebecca's life, her goal of advancing to project manager with Blue Chip, her relationships with her friends and family, her passion for Florida living, and her obsession with looking good and leading an over the top food and drink management schedule. The romance part of the book was minor, just kind of flitted in and out and wasn't too romantic anyway.Despite Rebecca's high hopes to be promoted on her birthday it doesn't happen. Even worse she's told she's going to be sent to the head office in Richmond for the behavior coaching class that's starting in a few days. Rebecca's been to this office a few times and is friends with several people who work there. She offers to assist in class set up and her friend confesses she forgot to print out the class roster. Rebecca offers to get it and while the Excel spreadsheet if up on the screen she notices the name Foster Diamond. The Outlier. The man who got the highest ever score on an HR exam. Rebecca wants to meet him and see if some of his genius will rub off on her. So she makes a couple of changes to the roster, putting herself as Foster's partner for the week. After she meets him she almost regrets it. The man is a slob and he's obnoxious. By the end of the week Rebecca has given him a makeover and realizes the man is HOT. They have a strange attraction to each other. Opposites attract.Rebecca lives in Tampa and Foster in DC and she recognizes a long distance romance likely won't work. She didn't count on Foster's brilliant mind outfoxing her. As an upper level manager he manages to get her job eliminated, put a hiring freeze on at the Tampa office, and has a promotion and relocation to Richmond offered to Rebecca - including one year free rent. All unknown to Rebecca that he was behind it.Their relationship jumps all over the place as they struggle with how incompatible they are but unable to deny their magnetic attraction.A fun read. Not what I expected from a romance novel but well written with colorful characters.The only thing I can fault the book on is a number of minor errors. There were a lot of proofreading marks that weren't removed before making the final draft go live and for sale. I'm not sure if the change tracking software wasn't working so well or what happened, but the person in charge of the last edit missed deleting proofreading marks.