Genre: Holiday Romance, Novella
My Review - 4 Stars
This was a fun Christmas romance novella! It takes place over the course of 10 Christmases. Alex and Lucas are best friends and everything changes when they kiss the Christmas of their senior year of high school. Each Christmas vignette takes us through their relationship and the years apart, as well as how their respective families change.
They date other people, which includes Alex coming out as bi. (I’m interested in seeing what bi reviewers have to say about the representation.) They break up with other people. Some years their friendship is on track. Other years they’re barely speaking. But each Christmas they continue to be in each other’s orbit.
As cute as this was, it felt like it dragged a little in the middle. Molly O’Keefe did a Christmas Eve story in 5 parts a couple of years ago, spanning from 2001 to 2013, and doing it in 5 parts allowed her to skip a few years as needed. That might have been more effective here, instead of depicting all ten Christmas days. That’s a minor issue on the whole, however.
Alex and Lucas were really great together. I loved watching Alex do her best to get out of their small town and see how she fared in college and her career. It was also interesting to see how Lucas stayed in their hometown and what life is like when you decide to stay. It was beyond satisfying when they both got their acts together and finally realized they’d never stopped loving one another. Lucas’s gesture the Christmas they get back together made me swoon!
CW: divorce (parent), infidelity (parent)
Synopsis
Two best friends. Ten Christmases. One happy ending.
When best friends Alexandra and Lucas share a first kiss on Christmas night their senior year of high school, it feels like the best years of their lives are ahead of them.
Then Alex goes off to college, and Lucas stays behind to work at his dad’s construction business in the small beach town where they grew up. Life, as they say, happens. And somewhere along the way these two high school sweethearts find they don’t have as much in common as they once did.
Lucas’s life is on Beaufort Island, and Alex is all about getting away and moving on. So he makes one of the hardest decisions of his life and lets her go.
But every year when Alex comes home for the holidays, fate conspires to reunite the two former lovebirds on Christmas Day. Year after year, through good times and bad, Lucas and Alex meet up, catch up, and reconnect on the anniversary of their first kiss.
Is it too much to hope that one year they’ll find their way back to each other permanently?
Maybe even this Christmas.
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Disclosure: I received an advanced copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.
