Review: Close To Heaven

tl;dr: cute Christmas story with a too-long epilogue

The Story:

If you have read any of the other books in the Colorado High Country series (which I’ve only read one, and I loved it), then you already know Rain and Joe. Rain is the vivacious waitress at the pub that Joe owns in the small town of Scarlet Springs. I do not recall reading any whispers of Joe and Rain being romantic towards each other in the book I did read, but in this one, the whole town apparently knows about the attraction between the two.

Joe, for his part, doesn’t want to make any advances toward Rain because he feels that as her employer, that would make him an asshole. (He’s not wrong; in general, it’s a shitty thing to do.) But it goes beyond that, as when Rain’s house crumbles under a record-breaking snowfall and needs to seek shelter at Joe’s place, she discovers some journals in his library. Those journals are from Silas Moffatt, the great-great grandfather of Joe, who owned the town’s silver mine and caused a wave of destruction and murder and rape that Joe feels ashamed of.

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Review: The Wedding Date Bargain

tl;dr: sweet and sexy chemistry overrides the few technical faults

The story:

When reading the title of a book, a reader generally has some expectations about what’s to follow. But when it comes to this book, toss them. I have no idea why the book is titled ‘The Wedding Date Bargain’. The wedding is a 3 page non-event, and I don’t even know where the bargain comes from.

This is the actual story: college friends Max and Sarah reconnect after 8 years, and then reconnect AGAIN one week later. Sarah has always had the hots for Max, and the feeling is mutual. She threw herself at him in college, but apparently he has a White Knight complex and refused to tarnish her virtue, so they spend 8 years mooning over the one that got away. When Sarah ends up working for his friend Sean’s chain of hotels, she AGAIN tries to seduce him and he AGAIN says he can’t be the guy to pop her cherry, because it would give her the wrong impression or something. But when Sarah agrees, and decides she’ll find someone else to fix her ‘problem’, Max goes 110% caveman and offers himself as tribute, because he can’t stand the idea of anyone else touching her.

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