One Hit Wonder (e-novella) by Elyssa Patrick

One Hit Wonder is a self-published contemporary romance novella. I got it for free a couple years ago.

Review:

Jane Timmons has been Damon Suarez's personal assistant for two years now, and she has been secretly in love with him for most of that time. It's gotten harder and harder for her to hide how she feels, so she has decided that it's time for her to leave and open up her own PR firm.

Damon is shocked when Jane gives him her two weeks' notice. In the past two years she has proved to be an invaluable assistant, and Damon had counted on her to be there to help him revitalize his career and become more than just a one hit wonder. In the process of trying to figure out how to change Jane's mind, Damon realizes that, somewhere along the line, he's fallen in love with her. But can he convince her that he's serious?

My records tell me that I got this one for free a couple years ago. I doubt I'd have gotten it if I'd had to pay for it, since there's something about the cover art that I strongly dislike. In fact, I went into this one expecting it to be another one of my poor freebie downloading decisions. Thankfully, One Hit Wonder turned out to be sweet and fluffy, much more enjoyable than I expected.

One thing that helped this novella out was that Damon and Jane had already known each other for a couple years, so Damon's “quick” realization that he was in love with Jane and that she was maybe in love with him too was really something that had been building for some time.

The author alternated between Jane and Damon's POVs. Jane's were so-so, standard “I've been in love with this guy for ages but am trying desperately hard not to show it” stuff. The parts with Damon's POV were better. One of my favorite early bits:

“This was clearly all his fault. She had to be dissatisfied in her job, and soon she was going to leave, and he would be lost without her.” (14)

And that was before he realized he loved her. I liked that, even when they were strictly boss and employee, he never viewed Jane as part of the background. He noticed that she liked wearing flashy shoes and that she probably didn't like the food at certain PR events.

As much as I liked the build-up to Jane and Damon becoming a couple, I did think that the ending was a little rushed. Also, the “three years later” epilogue had me wondering whether Damon and Jane had cut their professional ties after they began dating, or if Jane was still helping Damon while trying to establish her own PR firm.

Additional Comments:

I thought the editing was mostly pretty good, although I did notice a couple oddly or confusingly constructed sentences.

I should also mention that, although my e-reader said this was going to be 79 pages long, only 62 of them were devoted to One Hit Wonder. The rest of the file was an excerpt from one of the author's other works.

Read-alikes:

• Sexiest Man Alive (book) by Diana Holquist – Another romance in which the heroine is secretly in love with the famous hero (in this case, a movie star). Or maybe secretly in lust? I'm not sure. Although I have this in my collection, I haven't read it yet.
• Gateway to Heaven (e-book) by Beth Kery – This one has a rock star hero and a small town heroine who doesn't know how famous he is. I haven't read this one and have no idea what it's like.