Working It (Love by Designs, #1) by Kendall Ryan
NA/Contemporary Romance
E books, 352 pages
November 11, 2014
Atria Books

Reviewed by Tori

Emily Clarke, a young woman from Tennessee, comes to New York when she lands her dream job as an assistant for a top modeling agency. Though her boss is a pill, she is more than compensated by being surrounded by some of the most gorgeous faces and bodies in the modeling world. Especially Ben Shaw.

Quite a job perk.

Ben Shaw is gorgeous, rich, and one of the top paid faces in the modelling world. Emily is smitten, as is every other female who comes into contact with him, but hides her crush knowing that he is so far out of her league, it isn’t even funny.

When their flirting becomes something much more, Emily and Ben embark on an illicit affair that becomes threatened by his dark secrets and a vengeful boss who will do anything to make sure she doesn’t lose the man she considers hers.

Working It by Kendall Ryan is the first in a new New Adult romance contemporary series that is set up around the backstabbing world of fashion. The premise is good if not simplistic-naive southern girl meets world weary bad boy model. Sounds great huh? And it is, for almost the first half. Ryan sets up the romance, infiltrating it with little bits of angst and tension. Our hero has the requisite issues which stop him from having a normal relationship and a boss whose hands on approach leaves everyone uncomfortable. I never understand the perceived authority figure whose creepiness is just accepted and explained away by everyone. Initial sexy love scenes in the beginning add to the appeal but the loosely defined storyline and over dramatized one dimensional characters push it off the cliff into unbelieveable territory.

Ridiculous foreshadowing leaves nothing to the imagination. The excerpt and prologue is too informative; it practically tells you the whole story in a few paragraphs. I have read books where the prologue tells you the conflict and it works because the story builds in a reflective and interesting manner explaining how our lovers got to this point. This one doesn’t. The explanation for the conflict is weak and nothing is learned from the drama. We are left thinking that good sex is worth everything-even forgiving lies and infidelity. The characters reach a certain point and stop growing. They become redundant, whiny, and ignorant acting. It becomes painfully clear that they may be adults age-wise but their maturity level is severely lacking. Some scenes are added that made no sense towards the storyline and are nothing more than plot devices to evolve the romance. One such scene had me tossing up my hands. It was a shocker that did what it was suppose to do-shock the hero into admitting his love for heroine. The problem was, it wasn’t something I was led to believe either protagonists would have normally done (especially the heroine) and it was equally obvious it was an uncomfortable experience for everyone.

The ending is a confusing mess with no real resolution or explanations. We are left with a small cliffhanger that hints at a ‘happily for now’ with Emily and Ben but there are still too many open ended questions left to be answered. I am told this is a trilogy and completes this year.

Though I’m sure many will love Working It; I found it predictable, trite, and riddled with over the top drama and situations that only served to annoy me.

Rating: F

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