The Holiday Kiss (Briarwood High #4) by Maggie Dallen

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Title: The Holiday Kiss (Briarwood High Book 4)
Author: Maggie Dallen
Published by: Indie
Release Date: May 25, 2018
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 181
Genres: Holiday, Sports Romance, Young Adult, Multicultural
Reading Challenges: CC's Goodreads Reading Challenge, CC's The 12 Books of Christmas
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon
My rating:

Blurb:

When an uptight nerd is forced to spend her holiday vacation with a cocky jock...well, let's just say Christmas at the beach has never been so hot.

With early acceptance to Harvard under her belt and graduation just months away, life is good for Maya Rivero. She's ready to celebrate Christmas in Mexico with her mother, like every year, leaving behind the Briarwood classmates who've never understood her. She can't wait to say adios to Luke Perona, in particular. Archnemesis, captain of the swim team, and all-around arrogant jerk, he's become more of a nuisance than ever now that her mom has befriended Luke's newly divorced mother. They've become such good friends, in fact, that Maya's mother feels compelled to invite the entire Perona family to join them on vacation. Including Luke.

Her vacation is ruined with one fateful invite. But when these two polar opposites are forced to spend time together outside the confines of Briarwood High, the truth becomes startlingly clear. They have more in common than they'd thought. In fact...these long-time rivals might even like each other. And it only takes one major holiday, two meddling mothers, and an epic holiday kiss to make them see it.

Each Briarwood High novel is a completely standalone romance and they can be read in any order.

My Review:

Favorite Quote:

I pulled her close, my arms wrapping around her waist and crushing her to me as I took over the kiss, slanting my mouth over hers so I could claim her the way I’d been dying to since…oh hell, it felt like since forever, but that couldn’t be true. She moaned into my mouth and no win had ever felt this satisfying. No race had ever made my heart pound so fiercely. No touch had ever felt so right.

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::sigh:: Did you read that?  Isn’t it just the cutest thing ever?!

I LOVE enemies to lovers troupes!  And this one did not disappoint! At first I was very angry with both Maya and Luke’s perceptions of each other.  It was so stereotypical and they both clung to them for longer than I would have thought after getting to know each other.  But once they both decided to let that shit go…..Man it was amazing!

Luke’s character was average in the jock way but he was extraordinary in his smarts way.  The way it was portrayed was well written and made you really think about high school stereotypes.  He was so young and he was trying hard to be a good role model for his little brothers after the divorce.  His mom was kinda a wreck.  And he was keeping his GPA up and captain of a winning swim team as well.  I think the author showed his hurt and resentment towards his parents regarding the divorce very well.  It is difficult to feel that way about a parent, you almost think you are betraying them but a childs feeling are valid in this.  He didn’t even try to resist his attraction to Maya and dove in head first.  He just knew how she made him feel and went with it.

Maya on the other hand was a harder nut to crack.  She carried her cloak of lonerness around like some kind of shield and was very resistant to letting Luke in.  Since she was the more logical of the two he presented his case in a fashion she would understand and appreciate and I thought it was very thoughtful of him to try to make her understand in her way instead of trying to make her understadn in his way.  Once she did, she went all in as well. And while I didn’t get some of her aurguments at first, she did manage to make me think twice about their relationship experiment.

That’s one of the things I loved so much about this story. There wasn’t a lot of back and forth once a decision was made. Once they decided, they trusted in each other to follow through.  And if questions came up they addressed them right away and cleared the air.  If only every relationship was like that right?