Aggie the Horrible vs. Max the Pompous

Lisa Wells

July 19, 2021

Entangled: Amara

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Blurb:

One’s playing a game. The other’s keeping score.

When wild-child Aggie Corelissen shows up for an interview with the last person she’d ever want to work for, golden-boy entrepreneur Max Treadwell, she has one goal—to not be offered the position. While she hates to disappoint the two matchmaking grandmothers who’d pressed Max to hire her, she wants nothing to do with a pity job. Besides, the guy could easily win Mr. Pompous Ass of the year.

The last thing Max wants is to offer Aggie a job. The woman, a mixture of bizarre and annoying, has gone through at least a half-dozen employers this year already. He might’ve promised Grandmother he’d hire her, but if Aggie doesn’t take it because he’s more than a little un-charming, that won’t be his fault. After all, his company is on the brink of a major land acquisition, and the last thing he needs is a screw-up as a personal assistant.

With neither of them willing to disappoint their grandmothers, the interview becomes the stuff of legends, and somehow, before either can blink, they’re suddenly stuck working together.

Aggie’s determined the only way out is to be the worst assistant ever and get fired…

Max knows his grandmother would kill him if he fired Aggie, so he’ll just have to be so awful she quits…

But what happens next, no one could have seen coming.

Purchase Link:
Amazon

I don’t know how it is with other book bloggers, but I have this calendar that must be obeyed if I’m not to fall too far behind, which is seriously an issue with my lack of control. I need to read all the books and try to do just that. However, I noticed that there was nothing amusing, light, on my calendar for the next week or so. But I needed something escapist, something to make me smile, maybe even laugh a little. My eyes fell on Aggie the Horrible vs. Max the Pompous which is an upcoming July read. With a title like that it just has to be funny, right? Happiness!

Aggie the Horrible vs. Max the Pompous, a rom-com by Lisa Wells, is, for the most part flirty and fun.

In the past year Aggie Johanssen (disregard the name in the blurb as it’s not the same as in the book) has been through more jobs than can be imagined, which makes her Meemaw worry about her. Her Meemaw arranges for her to get an interview with Max Treadwell, who buys and flips properties. Max recognizes that his own grandmother and Aggie’s are up to something, but he agrees to give Aggie an interview to be his temporary assistant until his permanent one returns from maternity leave. He just doesn’t promise to his grandmother that the interview alone won’t make Aggie go screaming out of the building.

Aggie the Horrible vs. Max the Pompous has a lot of promise and manages to come through on a lot of it. Aggie and Max are both fun characters, although Aggie’s obsession with the fact that she comes from the wrong side of the tracks gets old really quickly merely from the fact that it’s mentioned so very often. Her lack of self-esteem, which is sometimes at odds with her confident sauciness, makes her question things that should be self-evident if she thought about them. And, actually that’s one of the bothersome things here because Aggie is smart. A person is not going to offer you a job if they’re just intent on getting rid of you. That doesn’t make sense.

Regardless, I let those things go (evidently mostly) because Aggie the Horrible vs. Max the Pompous did prove to be fun escapist fare. And I let it the little things that didn’t make sense go until the end. I expected a grand gesture but the end fizzled out like a dud firework. But even worse than the fizzling was that sex was pretty much being used as the apology, which is wrong on so many levels after they parted the way they did. Wrong. Just wrong. I thought it demeaning that anyone would think that insulting words and bad behavior could be dismissed by sex–even in a long term relationship that might be pushing it.

Up until the ending, this was a pretty solid, above-average read. The question is: how much emphasis do we put on the end in a rom-com? At the very least, we should come away feeling happy and even the epilogue didn’t get me there. For that reason, that ending dropped a solid point from this rating. Maybe others won’t mind the ending as much as I did.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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rating: 

3 out of 5 butterflies

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