Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Slator (The Launch Date) entertains with this lively contemporary romance following entrepreneur Jess Cole as she works to get her fledgling tech company, Wyst, off the ground. Jess is dangerously overdrawn at the bank when she comes across an opportunity to apply for TechRumble, a Shark Tank--style competition sponsored by Odericco Investments. After Jess accidentally applies as Mr. Cole and gets accepted, she decides a man might have a better chance of winning and enlists her twin brother, Spencer, an actor, to be the face of Wyst. As they head to TechRumble in Rome, Jess plays the role of his assistant and prepares to feed him information for the pitch to investors. Complications arise when Jess finds herself falling for the attractive and playful Oliver Kavanagh, assistant to the Odericco CEO. After her last boyfriend shared intimate photos with their coworkers, destroying both of their careers, Jess is afraid to get involved with anyone, let alone risk a possible conflict of interest. Even worse, her trouble-making ex shows up in Rome with blackmail on his mind. There are some improbable plot beats along the way, but Jess's efforts to fulfill her business dream are admirable, and her chemistry with Oliver feels organic. It's easy to root for these two to find a happy ending. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
When Jess Cole struggles to get funding for her tech startup, Wyst, she wonders if it's because she's a woman. With her bank balances in the negative and her company hanging on by a thread, she submits an application for the prestigious TechRumble competition under the name of her twin brother, Spencer. Wyst is accepted into the competition at the last minute, and Jess convinces Spencer to pose as the CEO of the company. How hard can it be to teach him about the tech space? Posing as Spencer's assistant "Violet," Jess is surprised as Wyst advances further and further in the competition. Complicating matters is Oliver, the assistant to the mysterious TechRumble founder, Dominic Oderrico; he seems to be the first person who finally sees Jess for who she is, even when she is pretending to be someone else. She needs to keep her company afloat, but maybe she'll find herself, and love, in the process. VERDICT Slator's (The Launch Date) Twelfth Night adaptation is the perfect blend of romance and workplace drama, with snappy dialogue and a satisfying ending. Great for fans of Jess Q. Sutanto's Worth Fighting For.--Whitney Kramer
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a twist on Shakespeare'sTwelfth Night, a London woman in need of investors for her startup disguises her identity at an innovation competition and falls for the assistant to a wealthy CEO. Jess Cole is struggling to find investors for her startup, Wyst, a company that focuses on women's physical- and mental-health issues and access to care. She suspects the problem has more to do with the fact that she's a woman rather than her business plans. To complicate matters, she was previously at the heart of a workplace scandal when a colleague she was dating spread around intimate photos, and the tech world has proven to be a rather small community. In a last-ditch effort to make her dreams come true, Jess enters TechRumble, a competition to fund budding startups--and convinces her twin brother, Spencer, to pose as the company's founder while she goes undercover as Violet, his assistant. While things start to look up for the future of Wyst, Jess has a hard time reining Spencer in, and she worries that he's inadvertently jeopardizing everything by courting the competition judges with promises she can't possibly fulfill. Oliver Kavanagh works as the assistant to the competition's wealthy host. He and Jess (as Violet) bond rather quickly and cutely morph from friends to lovers. Working as his cousin's assistant isn't the career he wants, and he eventually comes to realize what his professional dreams actually are. Jess' deception hangs over the story, as she's potentially sabotaged the sole reason she entered TechRumble in the first place, creating wonderful tension that drives most of the book's momentum. Jess and Oliver's romance is simply fine. It's sweet but slow, and Oliver lacks extra oomph as the leading man. Better on the tech than the romance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
