Rating: 3.75 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
After Will’s mother had a stroke, he moved in with her to help and needs a different job making more money. When he accepts a job as an assistant to a CEO, Will doesn’t meet his new boss until his first day. And his boss, CEO Spencer Cox, turns out to be the same man that Will had a hot, intimate encounter with recently at a club. Will isn’t sure now how he’s going to work beside the man that is every fantasy of his come to life.
Spencer Cox is a successful billionaire, but his life has recently been disrupted by a false sexual harassment accusation from a disgruntled employee. He is determined to keep his distance from his new assistant to protect himself, but he’s already been as close as possible to the man before he knew he was his employee.
Spencer has told Will that there can’t be anything between them because of work. Will needs to keep his job and Spencer needs to keep his hands to himself, but try telling that to the intense chemistry happening between them.
Mr. Big Shot starts off Olsen’s Suits & Sevens series, which is a spinoff of the Love & Luck series. Will and Spencer have both appeared in the previous series, with Will as Jamie’s best friend and Spencer as Shay’s “sworn enemy” and rugby nemesis. Spencer and Will’s relationship does stand alone and if you have read the first series, you will see some connections overlap.
The set up here is a classic one with the men hooking up and then Will finding out that Spencer is his new boss. The hook up happens quickly in the beginning of the book and, while early hookups can make for great reading, I would have liked to have seen a touch more chemistry or interaction between the men before they dropped their pants in the middle of a bar hallway.
Even though Spencer is in charge all day long, he likes being dominated in the bedroom. And, even though Will has no experience being more dominant, he’s a natural fit for what Spencer needs and after a month of Spencer avoiding him, he goes after the man he wants. The men light up during their time alone, but the need to keep it quiet at work tests both of their patience.
This book has a similar formula to the previous series with a large cast and Spencer keeping a group chat with his friends similar to the Kelly’s. Will and Spencer move along falling in love while keeping their relationship private until an incident with assumptions and no communication happens. The story felt like it had all the same tone and areas where there should have been more emotion or tension all read the same and stayed even for me. I was missing the nuanced layers to the story here.
A couple of things early on in the book made me pause. Will interviews for his job with Spencer’s sister, Emily, who also runs the company. Later that evening, Will sees Emily with Spencer at a bar and doesn’t seem to recognize her, which seemed unlikely to me and would have then possibly negated Will not knowing who Spencer was before they hooked up and it didn’t make a lot of sense. Also, Will mentions being proud of the research he did on the company for his interview and Spencer is high profile enough to be talked about on television and Will knows about the harassment charges. It would seem unlikely that Will would not have come across a photo of Spencer in his research and these two things back-to-back in the beginning of the book did derail the story for me a bit.
I do like the world Olsen created here and the characters and I do look forward to the interconnecting stories as the series progresses.