Review: Strictly Confidential – Lynda Aicher
Strictly Confidentialby Lynda Aicher
Series: The Boardroom #3
Also in this series: After Hours, Blind Trust, Signed Over
Publisher: Carina Press
Publication Date: August 27, 2018
Genres: Romance
Pages: 304
Source: NetGalley
I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
My rating:
What’s your pleasure?
From Lynda Aicher, author of the bestselling Wicked Play books, comes an exclusive invitation to the Boardroom—where working late has its rewards.Life is about power—who has it, who doesn’t.
Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t spent time in Kennedy Keller’s business-casual two-point-five-inch heels. A woman in a world very much run by men, Kennedy does whatever it takes to keep her power, in the office and outside of it.
Until she lets her guard down and decides to submit to a man for just one night. He’s everything she doesn’t usually let herself have: sexy, strong…dominant.
Matt Hamilton said goodbye to the Dom life years ago—power games and the delectable push/pull of dominance and submission might start in the bedroom, but it never stays there.
Reunited in the Boardroom, Matt and Kennedy test their desires and boundaries…and learn that one night is never just one night.
Unlike the previous novels, this one doesn’t start in The Boardroom, but rather at a conference in SoCal, when Kennedy spies a particularly alluring man at her hotel bar. Kennedy’s at the conference as the VP of Operations at her family’s company, and the handsome man, Matt, is the new CEO of a trucking company – though neither of them know who each other is, as Matt refuses to talk about work. Their encounter is ridiculously hot and steamy, and since Matt insisted on no work talk, she leaves with no idea of who he is. Back in the SF Bay Area at their respective companies, though, they both find they’re having problems forgetting the other, which leads them both to attend a scene in The Boardroom. Sparks fly, but between their respective careers and families, is there any room for their relationship?
“Resentment got her nowhere, but owning and using her assets gave her power she had no trouble wielding. Her mother thrived among the social elite, and Kennedy had been raised to excel within that set as well. But she needed more than that. She wasn’t born to simply exist. She had things to prove and security to achieve — for herself.”
A lot of the direction in the book comes from Kennedy’s need to be in control of her life, to be the dominant person in her business negotiations. Matt, though, fulfills her long-buried need to let someone else take over control, but only in the bedroom. I don’t think it’s a secret to anyone that women need to work twice as hard as men to get the same recognition, and Kennedy’s further hampered by the fact that she works for her family’s company, with her father as CEO. Her job is pretty much her life, and pretty much her only personal activity is putting on scenes at The Boardroom. Matt, by contrast, is an ex-military man with two teens from his divorce, and he takes being there for his family seriously, even though he is also committed to his job. Matt has his own issues with dominance and submission, and has pretty much sworn off that lifestyle for the sake of his family (the story behind that is convoluted, and, I think, one of the parts of the book that worked least for me).
One of the issues I had with the book is that I didn’t care much for Kennedy. I loved how she owned her sexuality and how take-charge she was, but I didn’t like how she just put up with all the crap from her father. After all the angst with Kennedy’s father, I thought that particular story thread wasn’t very well wrapped up – we leave without much resolution. While I thought she loved her job – and excelled at it – I wasn’t sure if her dedication to Keller Pallets was because it was expected (she’d been working there since she took a job at the front desk as a teen) or because she really loved it. I had almost expected her to leave and become CEO of another company just to get some space from her family. I also had an issue with the main conflict of the book – that Kennedy couldn’t both be a powerful, in-charge woman and also someone who submitted to Matt. It just didn’t seem that far-fetched to me to understand that she could let down her guard with one person without affecting her professional life.
So, in summary, while I still enjoyed the book, I didn’t like it as much as the previous ones in the series. It does seem like things are finally being set up for Trevor’s story, though, so I’ll definitely continue reading to see what’s next.
