Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Review - - One Snowy Night

One Snowy Night
By Jill Shalvis
Publisher: Avon Impulse
Release Date: November 8, 2016


 

Rory Andrews, one of Willa Davis’s rescues (The Trouble with Mistletoe), has promised her step-dad that she will be home for Christmas to surprise her mother and three half-sisters. With a history of broken promises, it is imperative that Rory follows through this time if she wants her family to understand that she is no longer the troubled seventeen-year-old who left home six years ago. Thanks to well-meaning but interfering friends, she is making the trip to Lake Tahoe in Max Stranton’s truck, and Max is the at the bottom of Rory’s list of people with whom she wants to spend four hours plus enclosed in the cab of a truck.

Max has mixed feelings about the trip. He is all too aware of the sparks that fly every time he sees Rory, and since his own Christmas trip home takes him past the house where Rory’s family lives, it makes sense to save Rory money and a majorly inconvenient trip from San Francisco to Tahoe. Offering Rory the passenger seat in his truck is the right thing to do and it is what their mutual friends expect him to do. But Max is not comfortable with his feelings for Rory. He can’t forget that six years ago she wrecked the plans he had for his life.

The combination of playing Good Samaritan and the resulting delay ensure that Rory, Max, and Max’s Doberman Carl are caught in a snowstorm. Rory can’t keep her promise to be home for Christmas Eve, and neither she nor Max can avoid the tensions of the past and the chemistry they have tried to deny. This snowy Christmas Eve night will be one neither of them will forget.

Jill Shalvis’s 2016 Christmas novella is a sweet, sexy treat for fans of the Heartbreaker Bay series. If you read The Trouble with Mistletoe, you will know some of Rory’s story and be aware of the attraction between her and Max. If you are unfamiliar with the series, this novella is probably not the best place to begin. I loved Rory and Max—almost as much as I loved Carl. In fact, I thought all three of them deserved more than the brief treatment they get in the novella. The plot is too close to that of The Trouble with Mistletoe, but Rory and Max’s story is intriguing and substantive enough to make a reader forget that if the story were developed. It isn’t. Instead the reader has to be satisfied with one hot winter evening and a quick, simplistic Christmas morning resolution to Rory’s family problems. I felt as if the novella’s pages should have been the first third of a novel.

I hope that Accidentally on Purpose (January 24, 2017), Elle and Archer’s story (Big sigh!) will include a tidbit or two about Rory and Max—and Carl, of course.

~Janga






3 comments:

  1. Thanks for your honest review. Sometimes a novella just doesn't work. Sounds like this is one of them.

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  2. I love the cover on this one! Thanks for the review! I think it will be a perfect quick Christmas read for me. The Novella that I didn't like by Jill Shalvis was the last Lucky Harbor one, Merry Christmas Baby. I was so mad at Sawyer for leaving Chloe when she was due any second. It totally turned me off to him.

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  3. Thanks for the review. I have it to read and will read it soon. I'll keep all this in my mind when I do to see if I'm in agreement. Novellas can either work or not.

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