"The Promotion" by Laura Domino

Benita Finn is ambitious. She’s climbing the corporate ladder, and she plans every move like a military campaign. She’s all work and all business. Now she has an opportunity to run the company’s office in Spain, but her boss has made it clear she’s competing with a colleague, Robert. And he speaks fluent Spanish. 

Adam is mourning the death of his brother, who died some months before. He’s stopped going to church, and he’s handling his grief by drinking himself almost into a stupor nearly every day. His father died in a drowning accident when he was six, and his father’s best friend Dan served as something of a father figure to the two boys growing up. And now Dan is in the hospital, dying from cancer – more reason to number the pain.

 

Adam first seems Benita at a drugstore and then at a coffee shop. He’s smitten. He cleans himself up, meets Benita, and finds out she needs to learn Spanish. And Adam reads and speaks the language. She hires him to be her tutor, but they both soon find themselves becoming interested in more than Spanish. But neither is willing to let the other know what’s going on.

 

Laura Domino

The Promotion by Laura Domino tells the story of Benita and Adam. It’s the first in the Fulton Ridge series, all connected to or centered on the First Church of Fulton Ridge. The novel is something of a challenge – neither of the main characters evoke much sympathy at the start of the story. Adam seems like he’s deliberately spiraling downward, and Benita seems so driven that she’s almost cold. Adam pulls himself up first and becomes likable and engaging. It takes longer with Benita, but she does manage to get there as well. And they’re both going to have to navigate some serious curves in their lives outside of their developing relationship.

 

Domino has written a number of novels in the Christian fiction genre, including a romantic suspense series, children’s books, the non-fiction Anyone Can Be a Superhero series, and several other non-fiction works. 

 

The character of Adam does most of the heaving lifting in The Promotion. Benita remains so focused on her work for a company that promotes internal competition (you’ll find little about a team-based culture here) that it’s almost a surprise when she starts doing things outside the job. (And even then, doing volunteer work seems almost a calculated move to help her situation at work.) It’s an engaging story, with a number of interesting twists and turns.