Side Effects by LJ Greene (Spotlight, excerpt, review, and GIVEAWAY) GFT

 

 

 

 

Side Effects

 

by 

 LJ Greene

 

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GENRE:   Contemporary Romance

 

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BLURB:

 

Who can you trust?

Ally Michels is fresh out of her MBA program at Cal and has landed her dream job at hot, up-and-coming video game developer, Jet Stream Studios, all thanks to her uncle, Jet’s largest venture capital investor. She’s feeling pretty good about her future until an inadvertent blurt in a company meeting brings down upon her the dangerous attention of Jet’s co-founder and chief developer, Marcus Abby.

Beautiful, brilliant, and vicious, Marcus is every bit the arrogant, deceitful founder her uncle warned her about. But in the power-fueled world of venture capital investing, things aren’t always what they seem. When Ally finds herself caught up in a play for corporate control, she must work with Marcus to save the company and an ideal she believes in, while navigating perilous family loyalties and fighting to hold onto her own integrity.

For Ally, there’s just one rule: never, ever trust Marcus Abby. Because the one man she needs to stop a high-stakes plot is the one man who has every reason to want her gone.

Side Effects is an adult contemporary, twisty, underhanded, certainly unscrupulous . . . romance.

 

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EXCERPT

 

 

For the first time I struck a blow. I could see it in his face for just a moment, before the reaction was quickly shuttered.

 

As usual he turned the tables with another question. “What are you going to do?”

 

“What am I going to do?”

 

His response was a hard stare.

 

And then it dawned on me—the murderous look in the board meeting when I started to speak up about the game wasn’t about me. I was partially right that he didn’t want me to defend him; he didn’t want them to know what I’d seen. He was worried about that. Was still worried about it. That’s why he’d sought me out.

 

I probably should have gone to Julian. After all, I loved this job, this company. I wanted to see it succeed and to contribute to that success over many years. These charades Marcus was playing—whatever they were—could threaten everything. There was good reason to think the things they were saying about him were true. And he certainly had no love for me.

 

So maybe it was just bizarre empathy for someone who probably struggled as I did to fit in in a world that told us we had to be an athlete or a supermodel or a jokester to be considered enough. Or maybe it was because we were the same age, both fighting to be taken seriously despite the obvious handicap of our youth. Or maybe I just respected him and what he’d accomplished, even if I didn’t like him.

 

It must have been that. Some Midwest sense of fairness that said a man should be judged on the full merits of his work.

 

I was certain of one thing, if nothing else. “It’s not my place to tell them, and I won’t.”

 

Marcus studied my face, hard, as though this answer was somehow suspect. But the long, searching look wasn’t quite laced with the usual hostility. It felt surprisingly . . . unguarded.

 

“Marcus, what are you doing?”

 

But that question was one bridge too far. I saw the moment he shut down, his expression closing to something significantly more restrained. His usual.

 

So fine, whatever was going on here, whatever repercussions may come to him, this was a situation he had brought upon himself, and he had no one else to blame for it.

 

“Never mind,” I said into the silence. “You don’t trust me.”

 

 

 

Amazon

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

LJ Greene is a self-professed obsessive multi-tasker who writes boring stuff by day and lets her inner romantic fly by night.  This California native is married to the most amazing man and has two beautiful children, now old enough to read her books but still not interested because of the ew, gross factor. She’s an avid reader of all genres with an embarrassingly large ebook collection, and a weird penchant for reading the acknowledgements at the end of a novel.  She’s also a music lover with no apparent musical talent, a travel enthusiast, and a cheese connoisseur.

 

Website

Twitter: @authorljgreene

Facebook

 

 

 

 

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The tour dates can be found here

 

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 My review:

 

4.25 out of 5 stars

 

 

“Side Effects” by L.J. Greene is Book 4 in the ‘Ripple Effects’ series and centers on Ally Michaels, who’s in an impossible position when she’s caught between her attractive but arrogant boss, Marcus Abby, and the machinations of the uncle who’s gotten her the position in the company.

 

This contemporary romance is part of a series, but can be appreciated just fine as a stand-alone story. The main characters are deftly portrayed, and I was drawn into the story and and tension immediately. I love that Ally is such a strong and principled character and I was invested in her struggle to do the right thing. Marcus was like an onion, and as his layers were peeled away to show his motivations and character, he became more and more attractive beyond his surface allure, hostility, and prickliness. The glimpse of the challenges of developing a new video game and the conflict between idealism and financial considerations provided wonderful facets for the story.

 

I wished for a little more depth to some of the secondary characters, and I wanted a certain jerk to get his comeuppance, but I understand that some sacrifices had to be made to keep the action flowing. I was very entertained by this story and now want to look for the previous books in the series, and I will be on the lookout for more works by this author.

 

 

A copy of this book was provided for review