Title: Hot Desk
Author: Zara Stoneley
Publisher: One More Chapter
Publication date: August 31st, 2021
2/5 stars
Goodreads Synopsis
TW: contains references to life after the Covid pandemic
Same desk, different days.A post-it note is just the beginning…
A must read for fans of Beth O’Leary, Mhairi McFarlane and Sophie Kinsella!
Alice loves her job and wants to keep it – whatever the price. But then she’s told the company is switching to flexible working and hot desking…Alice’s desk might look a mess, but she knows exactly where everything is. Or she did. Until she found out she’s going to share it with the most annoying guy in the office.
Jamie can work from anywhere. He’s quite happy to sweep his work life into a box at the end of the working day. But can sharing a desk with Alice be as much fun as teasing her in person?
With no option but to try it and see, will their relationship turn into open warfare or will it ever progress beyond a post-it note?
Review
Hot Desk is set in England and is a second chance romance when two people who shared a kiss in college end up working together and sharing a desk when the company needs to downsize. Alice and Jamie start to share notes and become closer, and Jamie helps Alice when an ex begins to be aggressive with her. There are some themes of family included as well.
This book was not for me. I read a similar romance before & loved it, but the writing in this book was not for me. Most of the book was Alice’s internal monologue rambling and going back and forth in time with no rhyme or reason. I didn’t find the romance to be at all engaging and the miscommunication between the two was excessive.
I wanted to like this book, but the writing really stopped that from happening for me. Not to say there isn’t an audience for this writing style and book, it’s just not me. If the summary sounds intriguing, I say read it and ignore my review – everyone should form their own opinions and has their own preferences.
Thank you to One More Chapter and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Happy reading, folks!
Baltimore Bibliophile 
Great review! I just finished reading this and am in the middle of writing a review. I didn’t particularly like the first half filled with the excessive internal monologues, because, as you write, it was mostly rambling. I needed someone to say something so that the whole miscommunication could have been overcome faster…or a long time ago. The second half was a bit better but took me a bit to get to.
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