Make The Yuletide Gay – Ivy L. James

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Rating: 3 out of 5.
This was a sweet easy to read novella.

Grace is a book editor acting as Nicola’s temporary assistant at their company. Nicola ends up having to cover a book conference at short notice, when of course there are no other methods of transportation available to them than sharing hours in a car.

The story is somewhat predictable to begin with. They end up in a B&B because the weather gets too bad for them to continue their journey. There’s only one room available.

The things I liked about the story was their connection about their backgrounds. Whilst they had an inevitable split during the narrative due to inability to communicate, it was due to the past and not a hurt one or the other had inflicted and it was resolved relatively quickly.

I found the epilogue to be a nice sweet way to sign the story off and I did find myself wishing this had been a longer story, as I feel it would have been less predictable with more to help with the tropes.

Whilst it contains the usual kinds of things, it was still a sweet, easy page turner that I enjoyed reading. I think Christmas romance fans find this an enjoyable way to pass an hour or so.

I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

All I Want for Christmas – Beers, Cummings, Riley

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Rating: 4 out of 5.
Three high quality Christmas novellas. I enjoyed all of them for different reasons and am actually struggling to decide on an overall rating so I’ve rated them all individually below:

Triple Dog Dare – Georgia Beers

5 stars – I loved this story. Sasha was interesting as Brooke’s boss in 16 Steps to Forever but she’s great in this. I love the premise of needing a fake girlfriend for Christmas in order to try and win a date from your sister. Sasha and Kennedy are great both as a fake couple and a real one. I loved the back any forth between Sasha’s sister and Kennedy as she tried to trip them up and how Beers deals with the grief of lost ones at Christmas, the emotions around really falling for one another and the guilt in lying without making this a heavy story. I’d have loved this if it was a full novel too.

Hustle & Bustle – Maggie Cummings

4 stars – Toby is a cop with a social work background. She’s sweet and romantic at heart. She meets Hannah at Central Park Christmas market where she’s running a stall. I liked the diversity snuck into the story and enjoyed spending time in New York during the Christmas season. I enjoyed this storyline but I’m not sure I’d have enjoyed it as much without the New York setting. The narrative is sweet and sincere, with as much of a slow burn sweetness as is possible to get in a novella. The epilogue left me sated with a nice ending to Toby and

A Christmas Miracle – Fiona Riley

3.5 stars – I haven’t had the opportunity to read Bet on Me yet, so I’m only aware that Mira is a character in the novel and am coming to this not knowing anything else about her. I enjoyed this story but wasn’t able to connect with it as much as the other two works. I liked both Mira and Courtney as characters and they work well together on the page. This had more angst in it than the other stories due to the tensions at work for Courtney and the issues Mira was having her bar due to staffing so I felt pulled out of the Christmas fantasy a little. The humour was enjoyable though and I liked the journey both characters took in the short period of time the story covered.

I’d happily recommend this collection to anyone looking for some fun wlw Christmas reads.

I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

16 Steps to Forever – Georgia Beers

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Rating: 4 out of 5.
A feel good, sweet romance from Beers. I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as Hopeless Romantic but this definitely cemented my enjoyment of Beers’ work for me. I liked this took place in the same universe as Hopeless Romantic and I’m hoping there’s more to come from this town.

Brooke has recently moved into town for a new job with a real estate agency. She’s well thought of in her field and is leaving behind family disappointment. Macy is a home stager who happens to work with the company Brooke has started with.

I liked Macy’s animal menagerie and the delicate way that Beers wrote her exploration of how to meet someone whilst dealing with the death of a previous partner. I loved her clumsiness and reactions to both Brooke and her family. I also really enjoyed her interactions with her nephew.

I really identified with and liked Brooke. I appreciated that Beers included a character that was both bisexual and of faith. I thought both of these and the reactions of the characters to these things were written really well. From the quick reading of the blurb I did I was expecting Brooke to have a lot more control issues than she actually did. Her moving and settling into a new job, whilst meeting someone she likes and trying to keep control makes things interesting.

I liked that both characters were intriguing with careers and pasts that made sense with regards to how they react to each other, which made the book a compelling read.

Fans of Beers will love this, and all romance fans will enjoy this too.

I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Not This Time – M.A. Binfield

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Rating: 4 out of 5.
I’m not sure why but this one really surprised me. I try not to dwell on the book blurbs – only reading them when deciding which ones to review – so whilst I remembered that this was about a musician, I wasn’t expecting a second chance romance with as much passion and chemistry as I got.

The book opens with a lot of heat. We meet Sofia and Maddie at the point of the band they are both in breaking up due to Sofia making the decision to go solo. They don’t want to break up but it feels like a lost cause. I have to admit after that much steam I wasn’t quite sure where you could take the rest of the book – but Binfield does a great job of keeping up the narrative.

When we cut to the present day, Maddie is no longer in the business, she’s running her own interior design company. By chance she’s contracted for a job that ends up being for Sofia’s house. The universe bringing them back together forces Sofia to look carefully at the career she’s made for herself and whether she’s happy with her life choices.

I loved the push-pull of them getting back together. There’s lots of feelings between the two, from love, to hesitance and everything in between. The normally annoying lack of communication makes sense in this narrative.

There’s quite a cast of secondary characters – the majority of which all of have cringeworthy moments. Maddie’s son is absolutely adorable and I liked how the other band member we meet, Daya, is honest about the past with both Sofia and Maddie. I also really enjoyed the few moments Maddie has with her sister Ashley.

I really enjoyed the romance and narrative of this story even though it does fall into some of the typical tropes. I think all wlw romance fans would find something enjoyable in this one.

I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Love Changes Everything – Jaime Maddox

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Rating: 4 out of 5.
My third book from Bold Strokes this month that approaches the traditional romance book differently. I enjoyed the writing, the book construction and the narrative of this one.

We start in the present day with Samantha, an ER doctor, who is being sued. The hospital is providing a lawyer, who turns out to be the woman Samantha had a relationship with in college – Kirby.

A large chunk of the book takes place in 1993, when the pair originally fall for each other in their early twenties. Some of this has a stereotypical homophobic parental trend, but it isn’t done in an overly dramatic way. I enjoyed that we got to know the characters a little in the present day before we made the cut back to their origin story and I liked that we got to see the beginning and the end of the relationship journey at that point.

We don’t spend anytime with them as a couple in the present day except for the epilogue which is a bit of a shame, but nonetheless I felt like the pacing was about right as they explored getting to know each other again. It’s nice to have older characters in wlw fiction. I enjoyed the maturity of the discussions when they reconciled and in the present day discussions around the lawsuit. The tonal difference between the present day and the past to illustrate how both women had grown in themselves was also done really well.

I’d recommend this to any wlw romance fans. It’s structure makes for an interesting read, especially as by not having a traditional chronological structure it escapes the 90% breakup.

I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.