{"id":12149,"date":"2019-10-13T19:30:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T23:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/?p=12149"},"modified":"2022-08-28T11:45:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-28T15:45:34","slug":"at-your-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/12149","title":{"rendered":"At Your Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Your Service<\/a><\/em> (2018) Sandra Antonelli<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mae Valentine has been the butler for Major Kitt for three years, acting as butler, housekeeper, and cook when he’s not away on assignment as a Risk Assessment Specialist.<\/p>\n

She has always kept a clear demarcation between herself and Major Kitt–after all, she is an older woman, and a widow at that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look tired, sir. Perhaps you might be ready for a holiday.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re so eager to be rid of me already you suggest a holiday. Is that your way of sugar-coating that I\u2019m beginning to look old?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIf that were the case I would have said you look distinguished.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What you need to know about Mae: she’s been a widow for 16 years, and retired from being a butler, but got bored and took it up again once Major Kitt became her tenant. She also remains in love with her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cApparently my still loving him the way I do is called complicated grief.\u201d Her mouth twisted. \u201cI think that\u2019s so stupid. I loved Caspar, he died, and I still love him. What\u2019s complicated about that?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What you need to know about Kitt: he enjoys women, he enjoys whiskey, and he enjoys many–but not all–parts of his job.<\/p>\n

After two hours he wanted to gouge out his own eyes, after three hours he pondered Seppuku, the Japanese ritual suicide. Death was preferable to paperwork.
\n…
\n\u201cI dislike being a passenger slightly less than I dislike sitting behind a desk doing paperwork. I\u2019d rather eat glass than do paperwork. Death is preferable to paperwork.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, Kitt is a spy of sorts. Yes Mae is his butler\/housekeeper. But Mae is also his landlady and well-enough off that his position holds now power over her. And Kitt isn’t James Bond.<\/p>\n

Kitt thought she looked as if she were about to cry, and it made him jealous. Tears, he knew, were not a sign of weakness. Tears were a rather healthy way to dispel and process stress and emotion that a good portion of the male population tended to bottle up and ignore\u2014 until a heart attack or something equally dramatic forced them into the socially acceptable masculine explosion of rage. Kitt was full of rage, so full of suppressed rage he would have appreciated the release of a good cry. Or a heart attack. Instead he had to sit on his frustration and roiling emotions and do nothing. He loathed doing nothing even more than he hated paperwork.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I really really enjoyed the characters, and the fact that this was NOT a James Bond type mystery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI once lived in Chelsea, and you do realise book Bond has a housekeeper named May, don\u2019t you?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a butler and she\u2019s a surly, grey-haired elderly Scotswoman who\u2014\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou perform housekeeping as part of your duties and you have grey hair.\u201d Kitt\u2019s eyes wandered over her untidy hair and picked the strands of silver amid the blonde. \u201cWe both do.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even if it was complicated and confusing and very much like how things might work in real life.<\/p>\n

It’s a very fun story, and I do recommend it. I’m not sure, however, if I want to read the next book, because the synopsis makes it sound like everything the two of them worked out–all the trust they came to develop–disappears. And I really hate a story that undoes all the relationship gains that happened in the previous book. We’ll see.<\/p>\n

That, of course, has nothing to do with this book, that you really should consider reading.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would have redirected my attention. You would have distracted me with some odd fact about yourself, confessed that you have a weakness for older women.\u201d <\/p>\n

He sighed. \u201cYes. I find Dame Judi Dench astonishingly attractive. Helen Mirren, too. They\u2019re smart women. Smart is sexy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I mean, come ON! How could I not love that!<\/p>\n

Published by the author
\nRating: 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Your Service (2018) Sandra Antonelli Mae Valentine has been the butler for Major Kitt for three years, acting as butler, housekeeper, and cook when he’s not away on assignment as a Risk Assessment Specialist. She has always kept a clear demarcation between herself and Major Kitt–after all, she is an older woman, and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,30,8,26,56],"tags":[454],"class_list":["post-12149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8-10","category-british","category-mystery","category-romance","category-sexual-content","tag-sandra-antonelli"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piQkW-39X","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14200,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/14200","url_meta":{"origin":12149,"position":0},"title":"A Haunting at Midwinter","author":"Michelle","date":"April 15, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"A Haunting at Midwinter (2021) Kai Butler (San Amaro Investigations) Parker Ferro is a supernatural PI. 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We see glimpses of Natasha's past through the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fantasy"","block_context":{"text":"Fantasy","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy"},"img":{"alt_text":"black-widow-volume-3","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/black-widow-volume-3.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5689,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/5689","url_meta":{"origin":12149,"position":3},"title":"The Suffragette Scandal","author":"Michelle","date":"February 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Suffragette Scandal (2014) Courtney Milan Set in England in 1877. Edward Clark has allowed his family to think him dead--only fitting since his younger brother all but had him killed. Unfortunately, that same younger brother is now going after one of the men Clark considers to be his true\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"suffragette-scandal","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/suffragette-scandal.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5509,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/5509","url_meta":{"origin":12149,"position":4},"title":"Black Widow Volume 1: The Finely Woven Thread","author":"Michelle","date":"November 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Black Widow Volume 1: The Finely Woven Thread (2015) Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto Oh, I liked this one lots! I have not seen the Avenger movies, or read any of the Avenger comics--I just know tangential bits picked up from here and there (because: geek). 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