Review: Vapid tripe
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 04 16, 2014
The main female character, Lydia, likes her some Fifty Shades of Grey. She reads it in her car before work. She reads it at her desk during work. She frets when she accidentally leaves it in her car when she goes to work. She patterns her work presentation after it. She really, really likes FSoG and wants to share it with the world. What she doesn't like is working for her boss, whom she feels is a jerk who doesn't appreciate her and treats her as a mediocre employee. She endures such degrading horrors as bringing coffee to his office, changing the background colors of PowerPoint presentation slides (which took her 2 hours - must have been a seriously long presentation, based on my own PowerPoint experience), and reprinting documents on blue paper as opposed to white. AND, adding insult to injury, the company only provides store-brand coffee and non-dairy creamer.Now bring on the main male character - billionaire Mike who is working undercover for a reality show, playing Matt, the new supervisor. Like all billionaires he is young, tall, gorgeous, fit, tan, athletic, charismatic, sexy, etc. He is constantly referred to as an "Alpha Male" despite his internal and external dialogues being nothing but silly, juvenile whining ("there's no half and half for the coffee?", "I have to fly coach? I know I can't use my private jet while I'm in character, but sheesh! I should be in first class!")and goofy posturing - during an conversation with Jonah, the pushy producer of the "Bosses in Disguise" reality program, Mike is encouraged to create more drama, to which he kinda / sorta / ambiguously agrees. Jonah says, "Great, I'm glad we're on the same page." To which Mike retorts, "I was always on the same page - you were the one who was confused." Oooh, tough alpha-male business-tycoon talk! Apparently he was saving "I know you are but what am I?" for a really important argument.There is no real original dialogue or situations, no character development. There are many, many pop culture references strung together with trite silliness. No context is provided for these references, so unless the reader is familiar with every show currently on television she might not understand said references. Which seriously dates this book, as soon it will be an irrelevantly random directory of canceled tv shows.But that's not what's important here. This book is basically a copy of FSoG, events here are taken directly from the source novel. Lydia and Mike (Matt) meet in an office environment, proceed to having coffee (after an erotic encounter in the storeroom that JUST HAPPENS to be interrupted at THAT moment by a fire drill), proceed to charity ball, drunk in the dance club partying with friends leads to an erotic encounter (which JUST HAPPENS to be interrupted at THAT moment by a text message), proceed to arriving for work & having the elevator to themselves (hey, it could happen), which JUST HAPPENS to suddenly malfunction & go dark, so of course they have an erotic encounter which JUST HAPPENS to be interrupted at THAT moment by rescue workers.There are so many things wrong with this book that the list would go on and on. The dialogue is juvenile, awkward, cringe-worthy. Characters flat and boring. Lydia is self-absorbed, snide, lazy, treats her best friend like a paid side-kick, and as another reviewer pointed out, evidently owns only one pair of underpants. Mike (Matt) is self-absorbed, forgetful (fire alarm? Oh, yeah, that was my idea. Crazy bonus program? Oh, yeah, that was my idea. Cameras following me around? Oh, yeah, reality show I agreed to be on ....), careless, unprofessional, lazy, whiny and ineffectual.This book is a waste of time, period. It's so bad it makes FSoG seem like literary genius by comparison. My advice: skip both books and read The Age of Innocence or Gone With the Wind or anything by Janet Dailey (if you like racier romance.)