Review: excellent emotional romance
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 24, 2013
Entry-Level Mistress. Sabrina Darby.ARC supplied via Netgalley.I really enjoyed this read. Its a romance, but with some mystery behind it. Emily is planning revenge on Daniel for bringing down her fathers business and resulting in him being jailed for five years. She's reviled him ever since, hating what happened to her family as a result. Then she sees an ad for his company, applies and gets taken on.She wonders if he knows who she is, and quickly finds out he does. The attraction though - she didn't expect that and neither did he. After some stop- go scenes, where they want to get together, then they don't, then they do....they enter into a torrid affair, and there are some hot, erotic scenes between the two, with them agreeing not to talk about the past. But is she still planning revenge? Is he planning to dupe her in the same way? And what really is the truth, is it what she's always believed, or is there more to it? Daniel doesn't seem like the heartless, dangerous, vindictive person she's always pictured, but is he just playing a role in order to use her for revenge?There's lots of questions - and thankfully they do get answered in a riveting and tearful finale. Daniel falls as hard for Emily as she has for him, but neither will admit it to themselves never mind each other. When their affair becomes public there's a lot of costs resulting to Emily, her family and job, and her relationship with him as she thinks he leaked the photos and her name deliberately. Her father is furious, she's heartbroken. Can they get back after that, and do they want to if they can't trust each other.I loved Daniel, he was so different from what she'd imagined, and like her I wondered if he was just playing a role to deceive her. She's so far from his usual type of stick thin, model girl date that it seemed odd, - but them I'm a romantic and always want it to be love :) He seemed to be such a genuine character it was hard to imagine him as the vengeful person setting her father up to fall. It was clear though he held a grudge against her father for his affair with Daniels mother, and that had led to his fathers death. Emily though seems to believe that the affair didn't start until after his fathers death. There's several other conflicts between what Daniel says about the past, and what she's been told.Emily is sweet, but she's carried this idea of fault and revenge around for too long. She's not planning to stay at the firm, having an artist in residence position at the end of the summer, but was just hoping to find something out to use against Daniel. It wasn't planned, just the idea and opportunity seemed to good to pass up. Now she's in the firm though, and has met Daniel she's struggling with holding fast to her intentions. I really felt for her, for so long she's been stuck between parents who don't get on, and fed a story that is now looking doubtful, and she's falling hard for Daniel. Then something comes along just at the time it all goes wrong, and she's tossed in a storm of emotions, not knowing where she'll fall and how much control she will have over events.Thankfully this is a stand alone novel - I HATE  getting to the end and then discovering there's more to come..at sometime in the future..maybe..if the author continues with the story. So a huge Thanks to Sabrina for not taking that route, and for giving us a great book, full of characters who I can empathises with, and a plot that kept me wondering what would happen, and how it could be resolved. Priced at 2.68 for 226 pages/349kb its decent VFM too.Stars: loved it, almost but not quite a five - bit longer for me and it would have been so I'm giving four and a half.