Review: Power Play turned my world upside down!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 20, 2014
4,5 stars!!!There are times in a romance reader's reading life when you come across a book that floors you in so many ways, words fail to accurately describe your thoughts. A book in a subgenre that is normally not what you prefer to read. A book in a narrative that you always shout from the rooftops that it's not your thing. A book that is from an author you've never read before. A book of which a casually read excerpt grabs you immediately and intrigues you to the point that you don't care about all of the above trepidations.POWER PLAY was such a book for me. Far from an easy, quick read it took me quite a while to finish it. This was mostly due to the style of the first person narrative. This is my least favorite narrative in reading. I've explained it before: I don't like reading this narrative for several reasons, most prominent one being that I only get one person's POV and in my romsnce reading I prefer both main characters' POVs and if there are secondary ones I'm an even happier reader. Recently I've read several books in first person narrative (mostly from fave authors who've gone the 1st person route) and I've discovered one 1st person isn't the other.It took me a few chapters to get into Charlotte Stein's writing style and I suspect it's because her 1st person style (at least in this book, since I haven't read her prior to this book) is to go deep into the character's head and lay open all the feelings and thoughts. This influences the pace and for me it made the pace much slower than the fast-paced books I love to read. I had to switch gears and get into a slower paced mindset and once I did that the beauty of this book and the talent of the author telling this story smacked me square in the face.Once the interactions between Eleanor and Benjamin really started (the elevator, the stationery cupboard, the meeting room after the effed up PPT presentation), that's when I started to find it impossible to set this truly fascinating book down. That's when I started to enjoy scenes that normally are pretty far from my comfort zone and I started anticipating the next happenings just as much as Ben and Eleanor were anticipating their next dirty encounters. And yes, I'll admit I would have loved a direct peek into Benjamin's thoughts and POV during some of the scenes but Stein did a brilliant job of giving me sufficient satisfying glimpses through Eleanor's.And here I was so mesmerized by this book, the writing and the dynamics between Benjamin and Eleanor I almost forgot to tell you how freaking hot this book is! Dirty, filthy hot! Stein didn't pull any punches and penned down a feast for lovers of dirty talk like yours truly. But what made it extra hot for me was the wonder and seemingly innocent way Benjamin reacted to every dirty thing Eleanor said to him and his own seemingly nave deliveries. I say seemingly because as much as Benjamin appeared to be clumsy, innocent or nave, I didn't believe it for one minute. Benjamin knew exactly what he was doing, what he wanted and how to get Eleanor to give it to him.