Book Review | Home Sweet Holidays Kindle Collection

    To be perfectly honest, I thought about just not reviewing this collection. My feelings are so lackluster, I am not entirely sure how I’d manage to make a worthwhile post. However I think that is in and of itself a realistic and honest review, so here I am. Amazon delivered two smutty holiday collections already–Scared Sexy this past fall and Under the Mistletoe last winter– so I was excited to have another collection to help kick off the holiday spirit. The past stories have not necessarily been highly rated by me, but the fantastic audiobook production and the short and sweet length of them made them fun spicy experiences no matter what I ended up rating them. 

     Home Sweet Holidays was… not what I was expecting. They have wonderful audiobooks included. They’re short and sweet with a warm little romance. The covers are delightfully charming. They are also… fade to black. Now I’m not saying I need smut in my romances. That is not the case at all. However, if you have marketed these collections as explicitly erotic for all pre-existing collections, there’s a certain expectation a reader will have when they pick up this one. It’s very obvious the authors were all comfortable writing spice, as they did their best to build sexual tension, but it felt like they were told they weren’t allowed to provide any explicit details. Seems like a weird idea for Kindle Unlimited–ya know, the space most readers go to when they are looking for smut? Maybe I’m no better than a man, but I just struggled to find a romance truly compelling in only 50-70 pages when their intimacy was extremely limited or nonexistent. I can’t even confidently tell you how I feel about each of these authors because I did not get the impression I got an honest sampling of their work. 

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Snow Place Like Home by Laura Pavlov

2 Stars

     Goldie Sunshine (I’m not kidding) moves back home after a breakup fin order to restart her life and invest in her dream of opening a local vet clinic. Her Christmas-fanatic brother is getting married this Christmas, and Goldie finds herself the maid of honor while the best man is her childhood crush and brother’s best friend, Ace. As the wedding festivities thrust these two together, Goldie must face the reality of her new single status and the real possibility that her tangled feelings around Ace just may be reciprocated. 

     So I know weddings are a big trope in the contemporary romance genre. I just don’t get it. Is it really that bad to go to a wedding without a date? It’s not like you won’t know anyone at your own brother’s wedding, right? I am not in the least worried about falling in love at a wedding, I’m excited to eat my body weight in cake and see the happy newlyweds enjoy their day. Their wedding is just not about me. I’m cool with that. I must be of an unpopular opinion here, because wedding romances are everywhere. Needless to say, this one didn’t have much of a running chance right at go. The trope didn’t work, the romance was not particularly believable, and the dialogue was incredibly high-school-cringe.

    I do not feel like I’ll be giving Laura Pavlov another try, but maybe I’ll go read a sample of one of her books some time before I write her off completely. Something about the atmosphere of this story tells me she was given a very strict set of parameters that she needed to write within. Maybe a book written without Amazon’s involvement will feel more natural and compelling. I wish I knew exactly how these stories came about. Are the authors each given a very specific prompt “Write a holiday romance story about childhood friends that reconnect at a Christmas-themed wedding. The male love interest must wear a fuzzy green grinch suit.” or something more generic like, “Write a holiday story that involves coming home”? 

Merry and Bright by Ali Rosen

2 Stars

Miriam dreads going home for eight nights of Hanukkah with a family that dismisses her success and acts as if she isn’t there. On the plane home she meets pro football player Cal Durand who is reluctantly travelling for his family Christmas, and they strike a fake-dating deal to help them each survive the holidays. But what should happen if those faked feelings start to bloom into something real? 

Oh man, I really wanted to rate this one higher. We don’t see enough Hanukkah holiday stories gain popularity, and I’m generally a sucker for a fake dating trope. Unfortunately I just did not love this one either. There was too much disbelief to suspend here for me to be able to digest this plot. I can get behind a pro footballer who just so happens to live up the road from Miriam’s family and who agrees to fake dating her. I cannot believe Miriam does not Google this man the second she finds out he likely has a Wikipedia page? The whole plot-twist that’s supposed to give this story a spine would not exist if Miriam acted like a perfectly sane Millennial with a computer capable of sending people to space in her back pocket. I’m sorry, I’m not buying it. 

I looked up Ali Rosen to see if maybe I’d give another of her books a try. I am delighted to find out she's a cookbook author?! I don’t think I’ve ever seen cookbooks appear under a fiction author’s Goodreads profile before now. This is incredible. I don’t know if I’d try her fiction again, but the food descriptions in this story spoke to me. 

All Wrapped Up in You by Rosie Danan

3 Stars

Piper and Scott are neighbors. Piper and Scott do not know they are neighbors. The two meet by happenstance at a comedy club at which Piper will be performing when Scott finds her outside amidst a pre-performance panic attack. His doctoring skills kick in, and he helps cheer her up as she finds calm. They believe this is the both the first and last time they will see each other, until Christmas Eve when the universe sends them crashing back together. 

This was absolutely my favorite story in the collection. Piper and Scott have such chemistry. The story had similar tropes to The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary, but I honestly think it was done better. My biggest complaint is the length. I just don’t think a short story was the right format for Piper and Scott’s romance. I wanted to see where things go from where the story ends so desperately. It just didn’t feel complete to me. It is also absurd that the cover designer did not include Piper's goose statue next to the door. I will be checking out more by Rosie Danan after this experience! I’m sure she can make me swoon with the power of a full-length novel. 

You Better Not Pout by Mia Sosa

2 Stars

Juliana and Eric have agreed to fake date for the holidays after breaking off their engagement to spare their families’ from an awkward and sour Christmas. It’s one thing to fool relatives you only see once a year, but to fool Juliana’s mom, they’ll have to pull out all the stops. The only thing worse than failing would be to fall in love all over again, right? 

It’s not the story, it’s me. I don’t typically like second chance romances. I really need all of the relationship development to happen on-page to convince me. I’m aware this is an entirely unfair expectation for a short story, but here we are. I loved the family aspects of this one, and I felt  the resolution showed a really healthy conversation between the love interests. It just didn’t quite win me over as well as it maybe could have with more length and some details about the couples’ pre-breakup romance. Mia Sosa also specializes in that wedding trope we just discussed, so I’m not sure I want to give her another try either. 

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I’m sure I’ll give the next holiday collection one last go. I’m desperately hoping the fade-to-black format goes away and we return to the smutty short stories. It’d also be great to see a return of some of my favorite romance authors in these collections as well. I appreciated when I’d get a blend of authors I know with ones I don’t. Of course, the collection felt wrong without Ali Hazelwood contributing something. 

This could be a really cool trend to take off in the publishing industry. I'd love to see Indie published seasonal collections take the world by storm. It's a great way to sample romance authors while reveling in seasonal atmosphere. I'm sad the Amazon monster thought of it first.