Street Smart

d'Aly Stiles (2021) - Smartypants Romance

Résumé : What could go wrong—four words MBA student Marcos Oliveira ignored when he accepted a prestigious internship at Reedweather Media, a subsidiary of the legendary Sandeke Telecom empire.

What did go wrong? Everything.

And when Marcos stumbles upon incriminating documents that signal corporate espionage against Sandeke’s son Martin, he suspects his strange intern wormhole has just exploded into chaos. When his alluring boss Eva draws him in to thwart the plot, he knows it.

After spending their lives overcoming adversity, can Marcos and Eva handle this latest threat? Even more perilous might be their losing battle against forbidden attraction.

His Ivy League education didn’t prepare him for spy games and illicit flames. Good thing he has the street smarts to work for it.


Ce roman m'a beaucoup fait penser à la série TV Chuck, il mélange plusieurs genres : de l'espionnage industriel, une romance entre collègues de boulot, et de la comédie WTF. On sent que l'auteur veut nous divertir sans trop se soucier de la crédibilité de son histoire et je pense qu'elle aurait pu se lâcher beaucoup plus à tous les plans.

Faut pas se leurrer, un stagiaire et sa boss qui décident de découvrir pourquoi leur patron possède des infos confidentielles sur leur concurrent et de rassembler assez de preuves pour le faire tomber, en montant des plans à la James Bond... c'est pas le truc le plus réaliste qui soit xD ... autant y aller à fond dans les trucs d'espion, en mettant nos héros dans des situations relativement dangereuses, histoire d'avoir un suspense, et en distillant des éléments comiques ici et là pour rendre le tout un peu absurde.

Cela dit, le roman est quand même bien et nous fait passer un bon moment. Eva et Marcos fonctionnement bien ensemble (tant sur le côté business/espionnage ^^ que sur côté romance), on a des personnages secondaires absolument merveilleux : Chad l'autre stagiaire et son powerpoint sur les noix en pole position xD.

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This novel reminded me a lot of the TV series Chuck, it mixes several genres : industrial espionage, a co-workers romance, and WTF comedy. We feel that the author wants to entertain us without worrying too much about the credibility of her story and I think she could have gone further at all levels.

Make no mistake, an intern and his boss who decide to find out why their boss has confidential information on their competitor and to gather enough evidence to bring him down, by setting up plans James Bond's style... it's not the most realistic thing xD ... the author might as well go deep into the spy stuff, putting our heroes in relatively dangerous situations, just to have some suspense, and distilling comic elements here and there to make it a little absurd.

That said, the novel is still good and gives us a good reading time. Eva and Marcos work well together (both on the business/espionage side ^^ as on the romance side), we have absolutely wonderful secondary characters : Chad the other intern and his powerpoint on nuts in pole position xD.