Room Service has some good points and some bad points. The book’s flaws were not egregious or terribly upsetting, but there were a number of them, and, when combined, they brought a good read down to one that’s only slightly better than average.

Katya Morgan’s life as the emotionally neglected, but otherwise spoiled daughter of Charles Morgan is about to change for the worse. For the catastrophically worse, to be specific. Charles, unable to deal with the daughter who looked just like his beloved wife, was too cowardly to rein in her wild jet-setting lifestyle while he was alive. But upon his death, he takes a drastic step. He disinherits her – completely. Her credit cars and cell phone service are cancelled. Her car is taken away along with most of her belongings, and her stepmother makes it clear that Katya is no longer welcome in her childhood home. She’s to leave with only the things Charles gave her as gifts.

Katya, quite unfortunately, has no clue about how to deal in a world not made easy by the availability of cash. She has no skills. She has no supportive family left, and her friendships are superficial. She also has the immediate problem of having to pay her large hotel bill. When Alex Sheridan, general manager of the Royal Palmetto hotel, offers her the opportunity to work off her bill by being a maid, she has no real alternative. But can she keep her mind on her job and off her sexy boss?

This book begins very well. Brandt conveys Katya’s frustrations and humiliations clearly and the reader is forced to sympathize with her over the curve ball life has thrown her. And the fact that Katya can conjure up sympathy, from either her co-characters or the reader, is something of a feat since Katya is a spoiled, pampered, laze-about who has few sexual or personal scruples.

She does, however, grow up during the course of the novel. And if her transformation is not entirely believable, it is satisfying to read about. Though she has not worked a day in her life, Katya has an innate respect for work and for those who must work. That respect goes a long way toward making her a more sympathetic character. She is also a very generous and caring person. She and Alex aren’t particularly well matched, and their relationship in some ways seems more father/daughter than man/woman, but by the time the story’s neat ending is reached, their personal happy ending is believable.

Unfortunately, the book has a handful of niggling problems. The first is that Alex is Katya’s boss. Brandt sweeps under the rug the conflict that his employing her and then having sex with her creates. It’s barely mentioned. Also distracting is a small suspense sub-plot involving disastrous incidents cropping up at the hotel. This was absolutely unnecessary and added nothing to the book. Additionally, at one point in the book Katya acquires a very large dog that she manages to take with her everywhere – to work, to the store, on the bus, to parties. It was enormously unlikely that she would have been able to do this, even lying as she did, telling everyone that this dog was a seeing-eye companion in training. Finally, and most annoying, was Brandt’s heavyhanded explanation of Katya’s behavior and motivation. The reader is told in a hundred little ways that Katya equates money with love and that she acts badly because her father pushed her away and only gave her things. This explanation was necessary the first time, but by the time everyone in Alex’s family got done explaining to him poor Katya’s battered psyche, it was a bit much.

Despite all these niggles, Room Service was not a bad read. Alex and Katya were nice people who deserved love, Brandt wrote several interesting secondary characters, and the book’s set-up was very effective. Had Brandt concentrated all her efforts on developing and resolving the main conflict – Katya’s feelings about money and her father – and done away with the suspense sub-plot entirely, the book would have been better. Even so, I don’t regret spending a Sunday afternoon reading this book.