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My Review:Title: One Snowy Night
Author: Jill Shalvis
Series: Heartbreaker Bay, #2.5
Published by: Avon Impulse
Release Date: November 8th 2016
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 160
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Holiday
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2017 12 Books of Christmas Challenge, Lenoreo's 2017 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2017 Contemporary Romance Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2017 New Adult Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound
My rating:
Blurb:New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis returns to Heartbreaker Bay with a fun and festive holiday novella!
It’s Christmas Eve and Rory Andrews is desperate to get home to the family she hasn’t seen in years. Problem is, her only ride to Lake Tahoe comes in the form of the annoyingly handsome Max Stranton, and his big, goofy, lovable dog Carl.
Hours stuck in a truck with the dead sexy Max sounds like a fate worse than death (not), but Rory’s out of options. She’s had a crush on Max since high school and she knows he’s attracted to her, too. But they have history… and Max is the only one who knows why it went south.
They’ve done a good job of ignoring their chemistry so far, but a long road trip in a massive blizzard might be just what they need to face their past… and one steamy, snowy night is all it takes to bring Max and Rory together at last.
4 stars — I was so happy to read this one so soon after The Trouble with Mistletoe, because I was so intrigued by Rory and Max in that story…you could really feel the undercurrents between them. And so I got almost immediate gratification in this little novella. And other than one tiny little thing that annoyed the heck out of me, this was a success of a story for me!
I felt for Rory and what she went through when she was younger, and how that shaped her into who she is now. She was still very damaged from it. But I loved how you could see her beautiful heart, and how desperate she was for redemption/reconciliation. Max was pretty cool too, I could feel the conflict within him…how he was mad about the past, but he was still drawn to her and perhaps confused over who he saw her as now.
This was kind of a perfect novella story. So often with novellas I feel like the relationship gets rushed, or I just feel like I want more when it’s over. But the pace and flow and length worked for Max and Rory’s story. And while I was a bit impatient to find out what happened in the past between these two, when we finally got there I liked how that all played out. I especially liked how with Max we could see him holding on to something with his past self, and once he had more information, he could see things more clearly and it transformed his world view. I appreciated that he was willing to absorb that new information and very obviously grow as a person. Not sure if that makes sense.
The only thing that honestly ruined the ending for me was the line “I love you. I think I’ve always loved you.” Nope. Nope nope nope. I’m not a fan of that pretty much ever, but the only time I understand it is when the characters have a close past relationship (ie friends to lovers stories). That’s not this story. And with how pissed and hanging on to resentment Max was at the beginning of the story (IN HIS OWN HEAD) I just didn’t buy this. He barely knew her, or talked to her. If it’d been “I think I’ve had feelings for you for awhile”, I could have accepted it. Sorry. Pet peeve. Rant over.
OK, let’s end with the awesome. Carl. CARL! I LOVED Carl. Carl is da bomb. I love that the animals play such a large role in both books I’ve read in this series so far. Seriously, everytime Carl was involved in the book, I pretty much died of cuteness overload. I want a Carl.
So yeah, as you can see, I’m really good at getting worked up about small things, but despite that I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.
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