The Naughty List by Cassie Cole

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It’s company policy: don’t sleep with your employees. 
No matter how handsome and flirty they may be. 
Yet when my promotion puts me in charge of the three of them? 
That policy is going to be hard to follow. 

Liam, the chestnut-haired boy-next-door I’ve flirted with for five years–and who is finally single. 
Arthur, the suave French accountant who pronounces my name like it’s an expensive wine. 
Robbie, the bashful computer nerd whose chiseled body and sleeve tattoos hint at something deeper. 

The four of us have to finish our big project by Christmas. 
Which means my gorgeous employees are totally off-limits. 
But that just makes our professional relationship even more tantalizing. 
Especially as we start working long hours in the office. 

With our careers on the line, can we ignore the growing attraction between us? 
Or will we all end up on Santa’s naughty list? 

THE NAUGHTY LIST is a sizzling, stand-alone Reverse Harem love story that is sure to fill you with holiday cheer. HEA guaranteed!

The Naughty List

Office romance times three!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 😟🤭☺️😘🥰

The heroine: Leslie – she is an operations analyst at a company called Allegheny Supply. She used to be in sales but moved up to operations a few years ago and now is hoping to move into a new position managing a project to transition the old software they have been using to a new software platform that will see them into the future since the company has grown so much. Leslie is also a runner and plans to run a marathon in a few months.

The Heroes:
Liam – He worked in Sales at Allegheny Supply and is one of the top salespeople. He makes great commission checks but wants to pad his resume with some thing other than sales, so he has decided to apply for the job on the Software Transition team.
Arthur – a financial analyst with a french accent. He was a fun guy and full of positive energy.
Robbie – an IT geek, who really isn’t a geek at all. He has a muscular body full of sexy tattoos. He is shy and doesn’t find it easy to meet or get to know new people.

The Story: Leslie wants nothing more than to get the job as manager of the Software Transition Team. She thinks it will be great for her career. However, when she talks to Liam one day and finds that he is now single and wants to go out with her, but that he is also applying for the STT, she has to say no. She doesn’t want to end up as his manager and put him in a position to say no to the job. However, it saddens her since they have always flirted with each other but the timing for them has never worked since either her or him was always in a relationship when the other was single.

I liked that this book was set in an office since Cassie Cole is so great at researching her stories and every book of hers that I have read so far has been so detailed. I laughed when Leslie was referring to how hard it was to get any work done while she was in a group on Microsoft Teams and the other members kept chatting back and forth and she found it hard to ignore each new message. I have that same thing happen to me every day on Microsoft Teams, and I have gotten sick of people saying thank you or giving the thumbs up emoji since I have to check each time to make sure it wasn’t a message I should be paying attention to. It just made everything seem so real for me. The other thing that made it real was how their deadline moved up and the board basically said in no uncertain terms that they had to make the new deadline no matter what.

I liked how the story went and how Leslie ended up as manager to the three guys she was attracted to. There were some real conflicts in the story, and you can easily see how tough a situation like that would be for everyone involved. The company had a policy of having to report workplace romances if you were in a situation like that and they would be afraid of losing their jobs if they failed to report a romance or being put in other departments and possibly losing their promotions if they did report it.

I also enjoyed the way the relationships between each of the guys and Leslie built, both separately and together. She was in a running club with Robbie on Saturdays, so they ran together for three hours and sometimes had lunch together. Leslie and Liam flirted and chatted via instant messaging quite a bit and Arthur and her spent time together at the company Halloween party. Yet they were all spending time together while working and the guys made a deal not to be jealous of each other or put pressure on Leslie to choose one of them over the other two.

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