Lord and Master by Jules Jones – review

Title: Lord and Master
Author: Jules Jones
Genre: Romance
URL:Loose ID
Other Information/warnings:explicit m/m.
Summary:
When Mark’s PhD supervisor sent him for a job interview with an old university friend, he didn’t mention that the friend was devastatingly handsome. He also neglected to mention to either that the other is gay.My review:

You remember that Mills and Boon story? About the secretary who starts working for a gorgeous bloke, and finds herself strangely attracted to her new boss?

Actually, there are probably hundreds of M&B stories like this, and it’s our familiarity with that plot line Jules Jones counts on. Mark Poulson is a chemical engineer, in the last six months of his PhD studies, when his boss suggests he might be interested in working as a PA/project manager for a friend of his who runs a small but highly successful company. So Mark goes for the interview…and finds himself strangely attracted. The friend, handily, is openly gay, just like Mark.

If you don’t know how this story ends, I’m revoking your slash reader’s licence on the spot!

I ended up really enjoying this one, but it took a while for me to start to do so. Let me get the negatives out of the way first.

The set up is utterly, utterly implausible. The role that Mark accepts is not one someone close to finishing their PhD (and with a good job that he’s enjoying, and studies which are going well) would remotely consider, because it’s a huge step down (even if it pays better in the first instance). PA is the kind of job you take when your degree is either non-practical, or you’re disillusioned with your chosen career or study path. I spent the first six chapters of this with my finger pressed so damn hard on the ’suspend disbelief’ button I think I sprained something, until I got caught up in the relationship side of it and it bothered me less. But it never stopped bothering me.

The characterisation and descriptions of the office and interactions do not help in allowing the reader to swallow the premise either. I’ve worked in office situations for nearly twenty years, many of those as a secretary/PA type person, and I have never seen people behave in this manner – the casual assumption that a cute new PA, male or female, must automatically be the object of lust by their boss is verging on the offensive. Would really be offensive, if the matter wasn’t handled at least semi-seriously later in the book. The other secretaries are all…too fucking nice, really, and incredibly accepting of their boss and his PA’s potential relationship. But then every single person in this story other than the boss, Steven, and the PA, Mark, and the obligatory bad guy, is a yenta to the bone. Even people who don’t appear on screen, like Sanjay’s mother, are bloody yentas! The hotel clerk, the post delivery girl, the laboratory manager – the cleaner for all I know – all of them are trying to get Steven and Mark together. Everybody is accepting of gay people, gay relationships, inappropriate sexual relationships and innuendo, and there’s not the slightest hint of jealousy, or concern, or bitchiness. Sounds like a great office to work in – if such a place existed.

Complaining about realism in a romance novel of course, is like pissing on a volcano – a pointless exercise in frustration. These things bother me, they might not bother you. But as a writer, I noticed I was being told a lot of things and never shown them. Like Steven’s supposed brilliance and toughness as an employer. Like the fact the office girls might cause Mark problems about his being gay – or that anyone would. Like Mark and Steven are allegedly very good scientists and interested in their jobs, but we never see them doing anything scientific or really even having a proper discussion (and scientists do talk a lot together about their common specialities) – the lack of any substantial detail really disappointed there, and surprised me since the author is a materials scientist. Like the office, one got the impression that it’s all just window dressing, that none of it’s real. Which is a shame because a few well-placed details and observations could have gone a long way to making this much more vivid, like having a couple of sceptical or unsupportive characters other than the somewhat ridiculous bad guy, would have made the story seem set solidly in the real world.

Oh, and that bad guy – that entire scene didn’t work for me. People don’t have those kinds of conversations with the help in British offices, or in front of them, or behave that way. I was also disappointed that having set this guy up, I spent the rest of the story waiting for Chekov’s gun to fire, only it never did. Like another story line that promised real suspense, it just seemed to fizzle out.

However, it would be unfair to see the book as fatally flawed. It could have been a much better novel, but it’s firmly in a particular genre, and it’s actually a pretty good example of that. There was a lot to really like in this, and I found these things outweighed my reservations by a good way.

So lets start with the relationship. While I never bought Steven as this tough CEO, in the end, I found he’d become very vivid and memorable. I loved that he’s an older man, with an older man’s concerns, outlook, medical problems…all of it. I loved how the author played with that – made it part of the reason for the attraction, and the dynamic of the way the two of them came together. Mark’s open about his kink for older guys, and it’s never sleazy or creepy, and the power exchanges between them are actually subtle and balanced. It’s that play on the classic Mills And Boon trope that makes this work so well, for me, and makes it interesting and suspenseful, even if the inevitable Happily Ever After ending is a given.

I also, to my surprise, really liked the sex in this. Normally the sex, however well written, does bugger all for me, and I’ve read sex scenes a lot more throbbing and dripping with passion. It’s the spareness, the small details of concern, of mundanity – cleaning up with hankies, worrying about condoms and cleaners, positions when you’re fucking in an office – which oddly, make the many, many scenes work for me much more than usual. I’d have like some of the word space taken up with sex in this removed, and replaced by actual detail (and if the author had cut about 3,000 words of verbiage about ‘they did this and then they did that’ which came across as filler, slightly, it would have been a much tighter story), but it was all mostly pretty enjoyable, and I liked how she explored the growth in their relationship and their power exchange through the sex without it just being plonked in.

The attention to things like the condoms (and the reason for Steven’s insistence) was of a piece with the surprising realism of certain medical plot details (and perhaps why the lack of realism of the office and the company was more obvious because when the author decides to give us a proper insight, she does it very well). Steven’s condition isn’t glamourous or glamourised, and it’s very touching how it’s affected his life, his relationships, and goes a long way to explain why he’s still single at his age. Mark’s handling of it was also mature, and spoke volumes for his real affection and concern. The affection between the two was very sweet, and it was so nice to see a couple you could imagine being together in the long term, because they faced reality so unflinchingly. I also thought the issues raised about the handling of a relationship in the work place, however unrealistically reacted to by other characters, was very well done without being ridiculous about it. Nice also to see issues about a gay relationship which didn’t revolve about them being gay.

Unlike far too many pro slash offerings I’ve seen, this novel was well-written, with very little info-dumping, none of the egregious POV violations that really piss me off, and cleanly edited. It was nice to see a story which didn’t obviously look like spray-painted fanfiction too. Calling it a gay Mills and Boon is not fair because it’s far superior to M&B in quality.

I’d rate it 7/10 because I’m a picky bitch, but I would recommend it for anyone wanting a good read that’s not pure fluff, but not horribly angst-ridden either. Most enjoyable.