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A review by gillianw
At Your Service by Sandra Antonelli
4.0
4 stars
It’s a rare day when you pick up a romance featuring older MC’s. Rarer still when one of them is a strong, successful, capable woman (a butler, no less) who isn’t a mother or a career-minded super bitch. If that doesn’t completely do it for you, imagine the MC’s played by Helen Mirren and Daniel Craig. Yeah, baby!
I really enjoyed book. It’s a romantic-suspense-spy-caper with zero virginal damsels in distress and absolutely no alpha males who act like assholes. Basically, it has a complete lack of tired tropes and I couldn’t be happier.
Mae is a fully grown adult woman who takes her job seriously, invests her money, speaks several languages and lives a fairly quiet life, still mourning the sudden loss of her husband 16 years prior. She dates men, of course, but never gets seriously involved. Kitt is a retired army major who still works for the government, albeit in a less official capacity (think James Bond), and who relies on the ever professional Mae to keep his life in order. When Mae finds herself suddenly and inadvertently the target of some rather unpleasant people, her and Kitt work together to find out why someone wants her dead.
I loved that Mae wasn’t some shrinking violet needing Kitt to bail her out of every situation. Yes, he’s more than capable - it is his job after all - but she finds herself more than proficient at dealing with the bad guys too. I found her to be realistically kickass and pragmatic to a fault, and I can’t tell you how refreshing I found it.
If you’re looking for something to break you out of a reading slump, or you find that constantly reading about people half your age is getting boring, or if you just want to read about an older woman who isn’t relegated to wife/mother/career-bitch status, then I definitely recommend picking this one up.
It’s a rare day when you pick up a romance featuring older MC’s. Rarer still when one of them is a strong, successful, capable woman (a butler, no less) who isn’t a mother or a career-minded super bitch. If that doesn’t completely do it for you, imagine the MC’s played by Helen Mirren and Daniel Craig. Yeah, baby!
I really enjoyed book. It’s a romantic-suspense-spy-caper with zero virginal damsels in distress and absolutely no alpha males who act like assholes. Basically, it has a complete lack of tired tropes and I couldn’t be happier.
Mae is a fully grown adult woman who takes her job seriously, invests her money, speaks several languages and lives a fairly quiet life, still mourning the sudden loss of her husband 16 years prior. She dates men, of course, but never gets seriously involved. Kitt is a retired army major who still works for the government, albeit in a less official capacity (think James Bond), and who relies on the ever professional Mae to keep his life in order. When Mae finds herself suddenly and inadvertently the target of some rather unpleasant people, her and Kitt work together to find out why someone wants her dead.
I loved that Mae wasn’t some shrinking violet needing Kitt to bail her out of every situation. Yes, he’s more than capable - it is his job after all - but she finds herself more than proficient at dealing with the bad guys too. I found her to be realistically kickass and pragmatic to a fault, and I can’t tell you how refreshing I found it.
If you’re looking for something to break you out of a reading slump, or you find that constantly reading about people half your age is getting boring, or if you just want to read about an older woman who isn’t relegated to wife/mother/career-bitch status, then I definitely recommend picking this one up.