Review: Asking for Trouble

Asking for Trouble by Rosalind James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Alyssa Kincaid has always felt like a loser compared to her high-achieving big brothers. After quitting her job in medical sales when her boss told her to push the most expensive, not the best, drugs and do whatever it takes to get a sale and dumping her boyfriend when he was not only unsympathetic but also selfish she is stuck in San Francisco with no job, no home and no boyfriend.

Then her brother's wife suggests Alyssa's sales experience would be a great fit for a role in the charity to which her brother's foundation has just made its first big donation, Project Second Chance. The charity is close to her brother's best friend and business partner Joe Hartman's heart as he was kicked out of home by his mom's boyfriend and spent his teenage years in a bad situation. Luckily he got a full-ride scholarship to Stanford where he met Alyssa's brother Alex.

For fifteen years Joe has been spending the holidays with the Kincaids, treated like a member of the family (although as Joe rightly points out, they might say that but he still has to be on his bets behaviour, no temper tantrums for him), and for all that time he has had a massive crush on Alex's baby sister Alyssa. At first she was too young, then it was bro-code, now he just feels despite his millions (yuck, yuck), he's not good enough for the preacher's daughter.

Alyssa has always wanted Joe, but he's always treated her as a kid sister, it doesn't help that he and her brothers are all so successful while she fails time and again, needing bail-outs and nepotism to get a job.

This book is seven years old and I think time is beginning to tell. Joe's backstory is sooo familiar, seems like the plot to every angsty NA/YA book ever written, and the spanking scene was just too cringe-y for words.

There were some redeeming features. First Joe's reaction/comments on the spanking, hurrah. Second, Joe and Alyssa really had each other's backs 100% and there wasn't that awful moment where one person decides they must part for the good of the other (yawn).

Overall, my score might have been higher if I wasn't in a Grinch-worthy mood about the sex scenes.

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