Faking Under the Mistletoe, by Ashley Shepherd

Unfortunately, every minor issue is blown out of proportion: Olivia and Asher are caught almost in the act in the office – and Asher’s reaction is to call it all off? What kind of guy does that? Ok, I thought, this shouldn’t be hard to salvage…

Olivia goes out for a kind of “girls night” to console herself and I expected something to go wrong. I did not expect Olivia to have poor enough judgement to accompany a known sexual predator, Levi, whom both her circle of friends and Asher warned her strongly about into a »curtained off rooms his handler is guarding«.

Olivia is sexually assaulted there and has to find out the next day that Asher knew exactly about said predator and his methods.
She decides that…

»Levi is never going to touch another girl the way he touched me tonight. I’m going to make sure of it.«

At this point, I thought, ok, this will be harder to recover from because the man Olivia loves knew and didn’t do anything about it. I was still holding out hope because the book started out so well and Olivia’s courageous decision not to let Levi get away with it was something I appreciated.

Even though, I must say, I don’t think a book that’s basically supposed to be a light Christmas romance is the best place to deal with the very real problem of sexual harassment or assault.

Then comes the next sexual assault, Asher making a fool out of himself, Olivia allowing Asher (who knew and did nothing) and her boss, Ana (who knew and did too little), to lull Olivia into complacency and waiting for something big to happen about Levi…

This is the point where the book started losing me – further entanglements, e. g. a kiss, ensue – and when Asher and Olivia finally make it up with each other it’s just too late for me. Shepherd has already managed to completely derail her storytelling “train” which was moving along so nicely in the beginning…