All Work and No Play

by Julie Cohen

She’s got mail! But who’s it from? Jane Miller is great at her job. That’s the best she can say about her life, seeing as her fiancé left her five days ago. Jonny Cole is a blast from Jane’s past. Since he came back to England from California, they’ve been emailing. But they’ve not met face to face… They’re about to hook up for a business lunch with his agent and he needs her not to recognise him – he needn’t have worried, Jane simply doesn’t associate her skinny, nerdy childhood friend with the beautiful male model in front of her! What she does see is the perfect antidote to her crushed heart. Can she allow herself a little playful flirtation? Who better to email for advice than her geeky childhood friend (the one who, unbeknownst to her, has been trying to get her to love him for years!) Jonny/ Jay has to decide which is more important: the truth or the girl?

Genres: Romance, Chick Lit, Harlequin, Contemporary Romance, Harlequin Presents, Friends To Lovers, Contemporary

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Julie Cohen (also writing as Julie Mae Cohen) is an award-winning, bestselling author and a popular teacher of creative writing. She was born in Maine in the USA, and currently lives in the UK with her family and a terrier of dubious origin.

Reviews

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's with the titles of most HQ books? They are too stupid to believe, and often have nothing to do with the book. This is yet another example. This book has nothing to do with mistresses or bosses. This is actually a well-written book about friendship, mistaken identity, trust, and love. I almost didn't buy the book because I thought it might just be about the "handsome boss who is determined to seduce his less worldly employee" or some such crap. But this book isn't remotely about that. This book is about friends meeting again after many years, and trying to forge a new relationship. And the love scenes are great!

[Alexis-Morgan Roark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should not have liked this book, but I did. Yes, the sex was hotter than any HP has a righ to be, but the story/dialogue/characters were just ok to pretty good.

The cheating in this book happened before the story began, added to the conflict in the story between the H/h, and took over the story a bit until Jane figured a few things out about herself.

Johnny/Jay is officially on my top 10 list of heroes, btw. His blend of total geeky male with more than a dash of alpha and a touch of the sensitive. Just a touch! Oh, man. Potent stuff indeed.

[Jacqueline J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skimmed the end of this one. It started out pretty good. The hero was very different in that he was a male model who wrote tech manuals in his 'real' life. But somehow it just didn't work for me. I didn't like that she got upset with him when she figured out who he was (an old friend from childhood who had been keeping in touch by email). I don't do real well when heriones get angry over silly things and then I just skimmed the rest. Didn't suck me back in.

[Cindy DeLong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jay is a computer geek who started lifting weights in high school to bulk up and get the bullies to leave him alone. He has reconnected online with a girl he always had a crush on before high school when he moved away. He has taken up modeling under a pseudo name so that he can pay off debt that his father left his mother when he died. Jane never sees the email that Jay sends her to tell her that she hired him to model for the advertising company where she works and that he wants her to call him by his modeling name. She doesn’t recognize him when he arrives in her area. She invites him to have supper with her. Then she goes home and gets on the computer and asks her friend what she should wear and do on her date. She asks what he would like and he tells her. She does what he suggests on the date, including having sex with him, never knowing that he is her old friend.

[Beate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very chick lit'y in that a lot of the smut is left to the imagination of the reader. There is smut, just not overly graphic. Which is a nice change of pace.

I loved Jonny, he's the perfect boyfriend material. He's smart, gorgeous, and completely taken with Jane. Jane, on the other hand, I got a little fed up with towards the end. I understand the misunderstanding and the hilarious drama that ensued from that. But after a while it got a bit old. Thankfully she came back to her senses in the final pages.

All Work And No Play is the perfect introduction to this author. I have another of her books lined up, but I'll be pushing that one further down my list. I have a few other books I 'must' read now. :D

[Lindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

It started out great, but the heroine turned into a ninny & I stopped reading halfway through.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't quite what I was expecting. The cover makes it look like I should expect some chick lit or something, but the fact that it's a part of a Harlequin Series about "sleeping with the boss" made me wonder what it was doing there. It's not a clean, chicklit romance. Thank goodness, because that's not my style. This is more of a contemporary romance (but it's no Harlequin). It's about Jane, whose fiancee recently broke up with her, but she still has to work with him. Her only consolation is her online, childhood friend, Jonny, whom she hasn't seen since she was 11, but to whom she spills her deepest, darkest secrets. They have a true friendship. Jonny however is in love with Jane...has been his whole life. He's actually moonlighting as a model and using the name, Jay. He's just been hired as a model for a product through Jane's company, though she doesn't know it. He's looking forward to connecting with her and sends her an e-mail explaining his presence and telling her to call him Jay. She doesn't get the e-mail, doesn't recognize him when she sees him and takes the opportunity to date a model, to boost her self-esteem. It's not until after she sleeps with him that she realizes she's just had sex with her best friend in the world. He's over the moon, but she's devastated. She stops the relationship right there, but with a caveat. She'd kinda really like him to pretend to be her boyfriend so she can face the people at work (since they think they're dating anyway). Jonny doesn't want to, but agrees, hoping for some time to convince her that they could have something great together.

Jonny is a great hero - he has the patience of a saint and I don't know how he was able to stick it out as long as he could taking abuse from this woman. He loved her, so I guess that explains it all. He's horribly smitten and ends up riding a roller coaster of emotions as she tries to figure out what she wants. Jane is a hot mess. She's definitely a sympathetic character at times, but I think a lot of that stems from how pitiful she is. She's so lonely and often depressed. The one reason she doesn't want a relationship with Jonny is because he is her only friend in the world...the only person she can talk to and connect with, and she's terrified of losing that. Only she begins to see that her plan is doing exactly what she feared, so she has to figure out whether work or Jonny are more important. There's a desperation in her actions that is partly sympathetic, but then also just pathetic. There's also a selfishness that I really didn't care for. She suspects from the beginning that Jonny has more than just friendship in mind and that he may really love her. Yet she continues to play with his feelings, raising him up and then smacking him back down. It's not malicious, but it is careless, and I had trouble liking her because of how unintentionally cruel she can be to him. As much as I disliked her at times, I really have to give props for the fact that the author can put this much nuance into a character. Her situation kinda hits you in the feels quite a bit...and likewise Jonny when he's on the receiving end of her thoughtless actions. This really was a well told story - much better in quality, complexity and character than some of the Harlequins accompanying it in the series.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

British chick lit

[Lenore Kosinski]

https://celebrityreaders.com/2022/06/...

DNF @ page 144 — Yeah, I know…50 pages left, but I was like forcing myself to read. It wasn’t even a terrible book, but I wasn’t captured and we were getting into only the second steamy scene of the whole book, and I was playing sudoku instead. And I thought, why? So I put it down.

Jonny was okay, but I was feeling kind of annoyed with Jane. I’m sure there were reasons behind her attitude and whatnot, and I think I could even see what was coming…but it wasn’t enough for me.

Also, I really freaking hate it when the blurb/title/everything of a book is misleading. 1) He is not her boss. So the tag line on the back that says “Seduced by her boss!” is completely erroneous. If anything, he works for her. 2) the blurb completely misses the whole mistaken identity shit altogether. His name isn’t even actually Jay. FFS. I’m sure there are 3-10, but those are the most annoying.

I still wrote the review here so I could count for my bookish resolutions, but I’m proud I gave up…even if it was much later than I should have.

[Readitnweep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very different from other Harlequins: both Jonny and Jane were well developed characters. Jonny was not a billionaire, but he was working to earn money for his mother - unusual. Yes, he was gorgeous but that was used to play into her insecurities.

Also, the online portion of their relationship was done lightly - not too much but enough to move the plot along.

Really enjoyed.

[More Books Than Time · Rating 1 out of 5]

Far too much emphasis on superficial.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Title is misleading, but story is good enough.

[Preet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one hot story! I love the theme of childhood crushes being romantically reunited, whether it was one sided or secretly returned. In this book you have two childhood friends who have been separated for almost two decades who are about to meet up again. However, Jane doesn't know Jonny, her childhood best friend, has adopted an alias for his trip. Jane, not knowing that the hot male model Jay is Jonny, is attracted to him but can't figure out why he looks familiar. Imagine Jane's shick when she realizes who Jay is and Jonny's shock when he realizes Jane didn't know who he was!

I love how this story starts off strong and hot and stays that way throughout the book. Granted they jump the gun first for all the wrong reasons, but they work through their problems and end up becoming stronger as people and a couple. Overall, this book is very enjoyable and it was a quick read. It's a perfect summer read; hot, steamy, and short.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book in a bundle but wanted to review it here also. This was so cringe worthy when I started reading it. Jane worked in advertising and a top representative for a firm who pitched ideas for clients to get their merchandise out to the public. Jay happens to be the male model that was being used in this campaign. Their chemistry was off the charts. But when his secret came out she was floored. Can she over come his being a model who has women throwing themselves all over him? She is not even that beautiful (she thinks) to even compete with the others. The secrets are there for the reader to figure out.

[Debbie is on Storygraph · Rating 3 out of 5]

More snow day reading (snow night, I guess). I do love a good mistaken identity story. It's one of my guilty pleasures. This was cute, and fun, and very very quick. I honestly wish it had been longer. I found it a bit more shallow than I wanted, and wish there had been a smidge more character development, or back story, or even just more to the story. I thought it ended a bit abruptly.

[Eykyvon · Rating 2 out of 5]

How come it seems like the same with Julie Cohen's "Mistress in Private". Its the same even in the first chapter. I wonder if there is actually a difference. Seems like the same book with different titles and covers.

[Beckie Treble · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't sleep last night so I had a look through my kindle and picked this out to read. I loved it, it was just everything you want in a romance.
Just awesome :)

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book description really does seem like it's for a different book. Except for the main character names, it doesn't fit the plot.

[Nian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cute & fast chick-lit read with a mix of mistaken identities, cheating exes and geeky-cute (ie non graphic) cyber sex.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

uber light chicklit read

[Hajira]

Awful didnt even finish 20 pages

[Avon Bernabe · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5stars!

Is it just me or the synopsis doesn't really fit the story? Especially the mistress part.

[Kaz]

DNF