His Holiday Crush by Cari Z

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Title: His Holiday Crush
Author: Cari Z.
Published by: Entangled: Brazen
Release Date: December 14, 2020
Format: eARC
Pages: 182
Genres: Romance, Holiday, LGBT, Contemporary
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 12 Books of Christmas Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Quarantine Edition
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Workaholic attorney Max Robertson is one meeting away from making partner at a big NYC firm when his best friend calls and guilts him into coming back home for Christmas. But there’s a reason he hasn’t been back to Edgewood for a decade—too many bad memories. The plan was to go for just one night, until a wild deer and a snow bank wrecked everything.

Former Army Sergeant Dominic “Nicky” Bell is the new guy on the Edgewood police force, so of course he drew the short straw and is stuck working the night shift. But his evening gets turned upside-down when he gets called out to a wreck in the snow—and it’s his one and only high school crush, looking even sexier than he did back then.

When they both end up stranded together at Dominic’s house, sparks start to fly and Max isn’t sure what to do. But everyone deserves a present this holiday season, right?

My Review:

I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

4.5 stars — I seem to be on a bit of a roll!  This very much felt like a souped up Hallmark Christmas movie…by which I mean it might have had similarities to loose Hallmark plotlines, but the story was deeper and there was less cheese.  And since I’m personally not as interested in the schmaltz, I really loved this.

Max was the big city lawyer that has to come back to his hometown, but I really felt why he was wary of his hometown and being back there.  Can I say that I loved that it wasn’t because he was gay?  Talk about refreshing.  He really had a lot to get over in his past, and while I think he only started to tackle some of that by the end of the book, I did love seeing him confront his fears and find them mostly unfounded.

Dominic was a freaking sweetheart who was working on his own issues.  And I think that’s one of the things that I loved about this story — he was already getting help for his PTSD, meeting Max wasn’t the catalyst for that.  Max just brought more into his life.

And the two of them together?  They made me smile, they made me melt, and they even frustrated me at times — but luckily that didn’t last too long.  The steam was…just wow.  Definitely a lot of chemistry with one another.

I think one of the surprise hits for me in this book was Marnie and Steph.  They were just so freaking adorable and precocious, and believable as children.  I loved the way they had 3 great men trying their best for them.  I loved that they were part of what reminded Max that there was more in life.

I also really loved the friendship Max had with Hal.  Even though we didn’t see a *lot* of it, what we did see just made my heart happy.  They were so solid and caring, you could genuinely feel their love for one another.  I also really loved that Hal was another non-toxic male — a cuddly contractor!

All in all this gave me everything I always want in a Hallmark movie without all the things I don’t want.  Total Christmas hit.