Georgia Kostopoulou
“The Honey-Don’t List” is a contemporary slow burn romance about two young colleagues that find each other and love while at the same time they try to maintain peace between their employers.
Melissa (Melly) and Rusty Tripp is a happily married couple. They have started as a small local office with beautiful decoration proposals and own made furniture. They have grown as a company and they have become very famous all over the country. They even got a Netflix show on renovation. Melissa is doing all the design and decoration and Tripp is building all the furniture and the two of them are very successful. And since they have been happily married for so many years, they even wrote a book on how to have a happy married life.
Carey has been working with the Tripps since she was 16. Ten years later, she is still will them, she hasn’t studied or went to college but she has learned so many things working with the Tripps. She has been with them all along, going from the small local store owners to the famous couple they now are. She is Melly’s assistant which means that she is taking care of everything business wide but also personal wide. She is the one that always has to keep the balance in Melly’s and Rasty’s marriage.
James has just recently joined the company as an engineer. As it turns out, his work is mostly that of Rusty’s assistant instead of an engineer. He doesn’t like this whole situation. He needs to be working as an engineer to add to his resume. His previous working experience has ended abruptly and he is looking for a more normal way of working. Unfortunately, what he get’s is a trip with the Tripps!
Carey and James get to accompany the Tripps on their book tour. All four of them on a tour bus for the next few weeks. Their job is to keep Melly and Tripp from killing each other and damaging the company’s image to the public. But as the weeks go by, their job becomes more and more difficult and they have no way out. James is promised the role he always wanted and Carey need health insurance, so they both have to stick with the Tripps.
The story unfolds bit by bit and the relationship between Carey and James goes from colleagues to friends to something more. The time the spent together in the tour bus allows them to learn more about each other and to bond. The start to trust each other and open up until they share more and more personal information. But it really takes time to get to that kind of bonding.
In the first part of the book it’s all about the Tripps. They cannot stand each other and they take advantage of the people working for them. I really didn’t like Rusty, who is a big cheater and doesn’t care about anything else than himself. And I certainly don’t like Melissa. She is such a calculating person that would easily blackmail an innocent girl like Carey, the person who knows all their secrets and who is one of their bigger secret, just to get her own way.
I wasn’t overwhelmed by the romance either. It felt a little flat for me to be honest. Okay, James has a beautiful body and he is handsome, so I can tell why Carey fells for him. I didn’t see how this worked on James side for Carey though. And then, after a few days on the past, he is in love with her. This was supposed to be a slow burn romance!
I cannot really see the hype behind this book. It’s an easy read, but not something extraordinary per se.
