Every now and then, one of these turns out to be a good read.

 

This one has lots of humor, heat, and an interesting plot. The H has a fear, not of commitment, but of love itself. His parents loved each other a lot, and when his mother was killed, his father fell apart. Scarred him, I would say for life, but since he's with the h at the end, it just required the right person to screw with his head. The h had a different approach - she wanted what her parents had. And she was sure she wasn't going to get it with him. They were brought together because she dated a homeless grifter who stole her mother's engagement ring (a large, badly flawed diamond), he posted bond on the loser for an unrelated arrest, and he wanted to catch the douchebag as much as she wanted to kick the douchebag's ass. Along the way, there was a lot of sexual attraction, sarcasm, wise-cracking, etc.

 

I'd hunt down the brother's book but it's by a different author. Not sure I want to bother.

I've noticed there are quite a few mentions of Alabama football in this series. The hero is usually a fan. But this story was actually in Alabama, in locations I recognize. That was a bit of a novelty, for the wedding to be on an island where my friends and I partied in high school.

I liked Seth. He was fun. And I liked Pen well enough, but her dating rules annoyed me. Still, this was a fun read.

This bitch... *smh* How to describe this girl... I don't even know. She's a huge contradiction. Graduated top of her class, but thinks pissing off a few Rangers is the best plan. She'll go toe to toe with said Rangers, but shakes in her boots at the thought of Daddy finding out she does charity work. She plays the pampered princess role, then gets upset when somebody thinks she's a spoiled socialite. She demands honesty, but she lies constantly. And then she tops it all off with "We need to both be miserable and alone to benefit others"... Fuck this bitch, man.

Nice collection of holiday stories.
Average rating of all: 3.5*

Naughty or Nice?- 4*
Cole and Taryn's story. It was refreshing to see a woman as the computer guru. I liked her intelligence. They were a couple in college when Cole suddenly dropped out and left. She's been left hanging for 10 years (bit of a long time to be hung up on someone). Luckily he was as well. She hacks into his computer system and the rest is history.

She's a Mean One- 3*
Ethan and Lark's story. Still didn't find out her first name. (Lark is her middle. Ethan asked and she wouldn't tell him. I thought it might be brought up later, but no). Huh. Lark can see the "magick" of Christmas. She (and her family) thought she was crazy. She's been anti-Christmas ever since.

A few elements I didn't like: the "special" cocoa (how much of her reversal was truly her?)and kidnapping (something Ethan never fesses up to) lowered the rating.

(spoiler show)

His First Noelle- 4*
Dash and Noelle's story. Another couple who had been together and split. Noelle has always felt like she didn't belong and it was nice her finally embracing her whole self. Both Dash and Noelle learned from their previous mistakes.

Silver Belle- 3*
Belle and Nick's story. See, Nick is human. Belle hid relationship from everyone. Than, Santa takes off. Nick is the next Santa. Belle decides they can't be together. The "misunderstanding" is resolved.

Most of this book consists of "I want him/her, but there's no way that they want me!", usually from Sam.

He was pretty damn adorable though.

There's nothing remotely realistic about this story. Everything works out way too conveniently...but it's not a terrible story, for all that.

Lou leaves her groom at the altar, unwilling to go through with the marriage her father has planned out for her. She realized she should have spoken up and backed out sooner, but things moved a bit too fast for her to fully wrap her head around them. That, and she's kind of a naive klutz.

To escape her father and her expectant mother-in-law, Lou goes to a company called Double Dare, which specializes in putting together adventurous outings for people. Sam, the owner of the company, goes over all of the rules in the standard contract he makes customers sign, the most important to the story is a rule that forbids "fraternizing with the customer". The contract is very important to the story.



Despite the short notice and the fact that there's something clearly going on with Lou, Sam agrees to put together an adventure for Lou.

Also, despite being addicted to the snack cakes that Lou's dad named after her (Honey Lu's), Sam doesn't realize who Lou is until he sees a conveniently timed news broadcast saying that she was "kidnapped" from her wedding.

Sam confronts Lou about it, and they decide to continue on the adventure anyway. After several whacky hijinks (that include a sex cult, getting drunk, and flipping off a police officer), the two fall in love, and Lou realizes that she's strong enough now to face her problems at home.

Sam takes Lou's desire to go back to mean that she's given up, and is running back to her father, and distances himself from her, because like I said, most of the book is Sam thinking that Lou would never want to be with him.

But everything ends up working out for Lou, and she doesn't have to marry the other guy (Chad? I think his name was Chad...) after all. And nobody is really upset about the fact that she ran out on her very expensive wedding.

Lou decides that she can't give up on Sam without knowing for sure if he's given up on her or not, so she goes to see him one last time, and offers him up a contract of her own.


...my mind was full of Kyubeys as I read this book. I'm not ashamed to admit it.