Snowfall

Lakefield novellas

by Mary Ann Rivers

Mary Ann Rivers delivers the moving story of a woman who must confront a life-changing event, and the man who helps her view the world in a different light—just in time for Christmas.
 
When Jenny Wright becomes involved in an online romance with someone she knows only as “C,” she can’t get enough of their conversations. Flirting online helps Jenny temporarily escape confronting the innumerable changes to her life as she slowly loses her vision. It’s easier having a relationship with someone behind a computer screen, someone with whom she doesn’t have to share every intimate detail of her life.
 
Jenny’s occupational therapist, Evan Carlisle-Ford, is helping her prepare for the challenges ahead. But the forthright, trustworthy man can no longer ignore his growing attraction to his fiercely intelligent client. His only option is to end their professional relationship . . . and embrace a romantic one.
 
Now Jenny must choose between the safe, anonymous “C”—or the flesh-and-blood Evan, whose heated kisses can melt snow faster than it can fall. And after receiving an unexpected present for Christmas, Jenny just may find the courage to let down her defenses and trust—in herself, and in the possibility of lasting love.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Novella, Contemporary Romance, Christmas, Ebooks, Holiday

143 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 4, 2014

About the author

Mary Ann Rivers has been wearing a groove in her library card since she was old enough for story time. She’s been writing almost as long—her first publication credit was in Highlights magazine. She started writing and reading romance in the fifth grade once she stumbled on the rainbow of romance novel book spines in the library’s fiction stacks.

She was an English and music major and went on to earn her MFA in creative writing, publishing poetry in journals, and leading creative writing workshops for at-risk youth. With Ruthie Knox, she is the co-founder of Brain Mill Press.

She loves to hear from readers and you can sign up for her newsletter, contact her by email, follow her blog, or check her out on social media.

Reviews

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buddy read with Anna

4 Solid Stars! A woman's profound touching journey, which at times was incredibly sad, but eventually leads her to a charming man and love!

Review to follow...

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally reviewed here @ Angieville

Last year I read my very first ever Christmas novellas and shocked myself at how much I enjoyed them. I mean I read a few duds, sure, but I read some real gems as well. And so a couple of weeks ago I found myself eagerly looking forward to rereading a couple of my favorites this holiday season as well as hopefully discovering a few new ones. Happily, the very first new one I read proved to be a home run. I kind of knew it would be, given how much I loved Mary Ann Rivers' debut novella The Story Guy earlier this year. When I heard her next book was a Christmas novella in the HEATING UP THE HOLIDAYS anthology, I snatched it up the day it released and snuggled up with my Nook for a little pre-holiday reading. I hadn't read any works by the other two authors in the collection (I actually still haven't read their contributions, though I plan on it at some point), but I can tell you the ebook bundle is utterly worth it for Rivers' story alone.

Jenny Wright was diagnosed right at the most inopportune of times--right after she uprooted her life entirely, moved halfway across the country, and started a new job in a new place. And even after being diagnosed with a rare degenerative eye disease, she chose to stay in her new life. Even though her mother begged her to come back home where she could look after her. Even though her colleagues walked a little more cautiously around her. And even as the days grew shorter and the darkness crept in. The one bright point in those days is the time after she gets home from work and settles in on the couch with her computer. That's when she gets to chat with C. Though they've never actually met, he used to live in the house she currently rents. And when she forwarded a piece of mail on to him, they struck up an online relationship. C is a macro photographer. Most days the two of them talk about his pictures, her thoughts, anything they like. Though their interactions grow more intimate, Jenny knows she can't handle more. She has enough on her plate navigating her work, her occupational therapy, and just getting through each day intact. When her worlds collide, she is wholly unprepared for the fallout.

I think my best bet is to keep still and let the snow fall, let the days get long again, the light return its hours to me, a few more chances a day to figure out what it is I can comfortably keep in front of me and see.

For me, there isn't some miracle cure, this is my life, or my disease will progress and my life will change focus again, and I'll have another new life.

I need C to stay right where he is now because for now, I don't know enough to move from where I am.

My hypothesis is that the light will come back, both outside and inside me.

I'm afraid and angry, but the light is a theory I want to prove.

Until then, I just have to keep the experiment going with as many controls as possible.

One bus, back and forth.

One store.

One man, his words under glass.

Yes. I just knew Ms. Rivers would bring her words. And how beautifully they were voiced through Jenny. I really loved her, you guys. My throat constricted on her behalf from moment to moment. And though I cannot fathom the terror she lived with each day, I know enough of fear to swallow hard at every one of her ruminations on the encroaching darkness. What I love most about Mary Ann Rivers' stories is how with one hand she keeps a ruthless stranglehold on false hope, and with the other she offers the most delicate of joys. I feel both rational and enchanted when I read them. Her writing does not require that I sacrifice either. And so I love it. Which is good, because she brings the sadness and no mistake. Because Jenny's condition is not sugar coated, I worried about getting my hopes up for her future, in general terms as well as with the man in her life. I worried a lot for a single novella. But I loved every page. And there were (as there should be) lovely startling flares of humor as well.

I wonder if he practices making awkward and nerdy look sort of cool. Like he fills his house with furniture that is the wrong scale for his tall body and buys plaid shirts in bulk and tells his barber to leave crazy, too-long pieces of hair mixed in with the regularly cut hair so everything always looks messy.

Then he runs his hands through his hair and puts on his plaid shirts and uses mirrors to watch himself sit in uncomfortable furniture until comfortable furniture looks like it's the one with the problem.

I loved him in the same way Jenny did. Uncertainly. Desperately. In awkward pieces and with a number of reservations. Neither of them faced easy choices and the untenable nature of their situation gave me pause more than once. But as the snow fell, how my love grew. When I think about reading Snowfall, I picture it in soft black and white with the occasional flash of color in the threads of his plaid shirt, in the string of Christmas lights hung with the fierceness of hope for light in the coming year.

[herdys · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not as amazing as Story Guy, Snow Fall is another heartwarming story by Mary Ann Rivers. She manages to write beautiful and flawed characters that make you fall in love & cry along with them.

[Renegade ♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 to 4 1/2 stars

A unique, beautiful, wise, and moving tale.



The developing relationship between Jenny (a microbiologist who is facing the threat of going blind) and Evan (the occupational therapist who is helping her to come up with ways to face this challenge) felt so real and honest that I couldn't help but be drawn in.

It was lovely to watch the respect, trust, humor, and affection, as well as intense physical attraction, unfold between them, even as there were moments of awkwardness, anger, frustration and vulnerability too.

I loved this excerpt and its wisdom about love, loss, and embracing the reality of the human journey in order to fully and truly live. It spoke to me on a number of levels so I wanted to share:



He reaches for my face, holds it, and then he's stepping close to me, and I'm stepping close to him.

I'm so glad to be kissing him, his snow-mint smell [...] amazing. Hard to imagine it's real because it's something I want, so much, and that I have.

When do we ever get what we want?

Maybe we do if we're willing to lose everything, or maybe what we want is so bound to loss, is so inevitably something we will grieve even when we manage to find and hold on to it, that to grab what you want is to accept the grief of losing it.

If I love Evan, I will lose him. If not now, inevitably.

To be willing to love him is to be willing to lose him, to grieve over him.

I have always wanted to see the world, and I have seen so much of it - the small things that make up the whole origin of the beautiful world.

I can't imagine how it is I will see them, now.

I can't imagine, but I will, I'm willing to lose, and lose, and lose again and again just to be able to see what it is I can in all the ways I can't imagine, standing on [the] porch in the cold, kissing Evan.



I enjoy Ms. Rivers writing voice, the intelligence and emotion she conveys within her work, as well as the portrayal and depth of her characters. I loved The Story Guy which inevitably led me to reading Snowfall.

I'm looking forward to reading more of her work in future.

[Anna (Bobs Her Hair) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars ... Hope, Light, & Darkness- Oh, the Christmas Feels!

I don't want him to kiss a sad-sack microbiologist who takes one bus and has given up vegetarianism because she's afraid to go the the good grocery store and sits in the dark at night passing notes with a stranger and needs her mom to talk her asleep.

I want him to kiss Christmas Jenny.

I want him to kiss the Jenny who's cleared up all the fights and misunderstanding with herself, and will have love, for a whole year.

I want him to kiss the Jenny who has figured out how to collect all this new data on her new life where the equipment's changed.

I want him to kiss the Jenny who's remembered that even if everything looks different, it doesn't mean what she sees isn't good data.

Jenny White is passionate about microbiology. She loves her career, the discovery process, and finds the beauty in things that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Within a few months at her new university post her doctor diagnoses her with retinitis pigmentosa. She has lost her peripheral vision and will eventually lose her sight. In the meantime, she struggles to carry on with her life.

Jenny's cyber relationship provides a safe outlet for the passionate woman who avoids the dark of night and stays cozy and safe in her house. She's usually a happy person, but you wouldn't know it to see the way she behaves with Evan, her occupational therapist. He challenges her. He tries to prepare her for the new way she will have to live. Jenny needs hope and she's about to find it and more.

"Snowfall" is a touching story about a woman who embraces life and must find a way to adjust hard knock that's been delivered to her. Jenny doesn't wallow. She's brave. She works through her obstacles, and it doesn't take the love of a good man for Jenny to survive, which was great to read. By the end of the book, I was extremely satisfied by the happiness Jenny found.

Light and dark have their purpose, in them, we can see different kinds of things, or protect others. Or sometimes, the most beautiful lights would not be seen as well without some blackness behind them.

Buddy Read with Karla

[Britain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing. Much like 'Story Guy', compelling characters in painful, real-life situations. Really interesting details, vividly drawn. Edit: Oh, and don't be deceived by the Macomberesque/Sparksian cover--the scenes are explicit and plentiful. And thoroughly enjoyable.

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Ann Rivers is a gorgeous writer and I’ve been meaning to read more by her ever since I read The Story Guy a couple of years ago. When I stumbled across this holiday romance, I was excited. But then I read the synopsis and became worried. A romance between an OT and his patient is in fact an ethical violation. There’s a huge power imbalance and feelings can be easily conflated or abused. Professional ethics protect everyone involved and make sure things stay on the up and up—the patient doesn’t need to worry about saviorism or abuse, the provider doesn’t need to worry the patient has projected or only wants them for what they can do. I’m not sure it’s possible to write an ethical romance between a patient and their healthcare provider, not without a big time jump at a minimum. However, I am always curious about how authors try to engage with this kind of premise. Health care providers and patients do develop feelings for one another. That doesn’t mean they should feed those feelings or act on them. What matters is how they handle it. There are only rare circumstances where that would be okay, no matter the romanticized depictions in media, including this novella.

Rivers is a talented author and that is in fully display here. She made super interesting connections between vision, photography, and science. I wish the ethics had come together because this does have the hallmarks of what I typically love in a story. While I was concerned about transference and countertransference, there was a lot I liked about Jenny and Evan together. Rivers came close to getting it right or at least leaving enough gray for me to suspend disbelief. I was willing Evan to take the proper steps…and he almost did. The novella wants us to think he did, at least. There’s no way to address any of my thoughts on this one without spoilers.

Very early on, it’s clear there’s some attraction between them but then Evan starts doing things that are definitely crossing the line in a OT-client relationship. He kisses her forehead. He shows up at her office unannounced for lunch. He makes a sexual joke. And Jenny knows that he’s crossing the line and not just because she almost kisses him. She thinks about how it must be against the rules to almost kiss your OT and vise versa. “When he held me in the lab, it didn’t feel entirely therapeutic.”

Eventually things reach a boiling point but even here termination isn’t handled the way it should be. They don’t have a conversation before or after a session or a phone call. Evan hasn’t lined up the OT who will take over for him. We find out he talked to his supervisor before he went to the lab with her. “I talked to her because I was pretty sure I was going to kiss you sooner than later.” And yet that wasn’t enough to transfer her to another OT?! Somehow at this point they’re both operating under the idea that Evan is the only right OT for her, which isn’t healthy and only means they can rationalize all the ways they’re blurring boundaries.

He finally tells her he can’t be her OT anymore but again, not in a formal setting. And things massively escalate from there. She’s straddling him in the van and they’re about to have sex. Evan says, “Just so we’re clear, I’m no longer your occupational therapist.” For the record, that is not how you handle terminating a client! We still don’t know if another OT has been briefed or if the supervisor is aware that Jenny is being transferred or what her patient records look like. But even if those things were somehow in place, it’s not license to immediately have sex.

He talks to Jenny about his grief around his mom’s death and how she didn’t keep “fighting” her cancer. He says this is in part why he wants Jenny to fight and why he’s worked so hard to figure out the best course of treatment for her. Some space between terminating their therapeutic relationship would be beneficial so he can have space to examine his motivations and determine whether a romantic relationship would be a good idea and really what he wants.

At an appointment, Jenny’s eye doctor says Evan told them in a chart review that he’d excused himself as her OT. Jenny says he was always a professional. Dr. Allen says she knows and that he did everything he was supposed to. From my perspective, he was not always a professional, nor did he do everything he was supposed to. I really wish he had. I also really, really wish there’s been involvement from a medical social worker. Jenny would have greatly benefitted from that.

Then there was a whole other subplot about Jenny and this anonymous guy she messages and has cybersex, which really complicated the waters. Guess what? It’s Evan and he figures it out but doesn’t tell her for reasons I couldn’t fathom. The fact that they’ve been having anonymous cybersex is one more reason he should have ended their therapeutic relationship much earlier than he did. The combination of these choices meant I couldn’t be on board with the way things went down, no matter how much I enjoyed the characters.

Characters: Jenny is a white microbiologist (and possibly plus-sized—I wasn’t sure what the body descriptions were trying to say). Evan is a white occupational therapist and amateur photographer. This is set in Lakefield, OH.

Content notes: professional ethics violation, FMC has retinitis pigmentosa, internalized ableism (countered), past death of MMC’s mother (breast cancer), on page sex, cybersex, role play, mutual masturbation, ableist language, reference to FMC’s father dying when she was little and not in her life before that

[Peyton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author, man, whew. Mary Ann Rivers is an amazing writer, and I am now going to buy alllll of the books. The Story Guy stuck with me HARD, and I think this one will too. Snowfall is about Jenny Wright, a microbiologist who has an online flirtation going with C. She's also going blind.

Jenny is scared that she's losing her vision, and I felt for her so much. Her occupational therapist, Evan, gets the brunt of her anger and sadness about the situation, but he still believes in her so much and knows her to be fiercely intelligent. They grow closer, but Jenny isn't sure what to do about C. They decide to finally meet. It goes about how you'd expect. But the writing!! It blows me away. The tone of this story is so tender and loving. I felt like I was wrapped up in a warm blanket for the majority of the book.

[Ladybird07 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ich bin irgendwie nicht in die Geschichte reingekommen und wurde auch nicht mit dem Hauptcharakter warm. Außerdem fand ich den Schreibstil anstrengend zu lesen

[Simone · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Mel]

probably not based on sample

[Danielle (Love at First Page) · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the holiday season fast approaching, I've been craving winter-themed romances, especially novellas, and immediately used the handy-dandy click feature for Amazon Kindle when I found Snowfall. As always with Mary Ann Rivers, her writing is gorgeous, and it's once again fascinating to be inside the mind of her main character. This time around, we are introduced to Jenny Wright, a brainiac and some sort of microbiologist (it all went a little bit over my head, to be honest). Jenny thinks and speaks in scientific terms, but with a passion, so it's more like she does so in pictures, in terms of light and dark, in the unique way she interprets the world. This is important, because Jenny is slowly losing her vision, a fact that is devastating not only for her career but for her self-worth. Her worldview has suddenly been shattered. In the midst of trying to make sense of what her life will now be like, she's also facing romantic confusion. There's the guy she calls "C" that she's having a cyberaffair with, something safe behind the computer screen, and then there's Evan, her occupational therapist who wants more from her than a professional relationship.

I think the main reason I didn't give this more than three stars is that very set up. You all know I'm totally against love triangles of any sort, but I had a good idea of how the romance would play out. It turns out I was right, but I thought at least one of the two main characters would know the truth of the situation before things got intimate. Because that's not the case, it made me uncomfortable and start asking what if? It was like a weird quasi-love-square. Obviously, not my thing. Once that issue is resolved, though, I fell hard for the romance. The chemistry between Jenny and Evan is palpable and electric.

No surprise, I was once again in awe of Mary Ann Rivers' writing. She has the type of style that places a lot of emphasis on metaphor, and that's especially true in Snowfall, given Jenny's career and that she values above all else her unique view of the world and now her very sight is being taken away from her. There are some really beautiful passages about perspective and focus and how many different ways there are of looking at life. I also love the way her writing captures the characters' emotions so keenly; I felt every single thing Jenny felt, as if her emotions were my own and bubbling inside my own chest. I have never had a problem connecting with Rivers' characters, and that's the same case here. Jenny is sensitive, intelligent, and she has a beautiful soul. As for Evan, we aren't inside his head, but he delivers some really passionate, sexy moments of his own. I love that he made Jenny feel like herself again, like she was still Jenny even though she was losing a piece of herself. Somehow, Rivers always writes these guys who have just the right amount of vulnerability and compassion, while still being entirely masculine.

If you're looking for a holiday novella to sink into, definitely consider Snowfall. It's not my favorite by Mary Ann Rivers but her writing is enough to make anyone glad they read it.

This review can also be found at Love at First Page.

[buchverliebt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diese Geschichte aus der Ebook-Reihe Romantic Christmas hat nur entfernt mit Weihnachten zu tun. Es ist vielmehr die Wichtigkeit des Feiertags für die Protagonistin Jenny Wright, welche Licht in meiner Dunkelheit für diese Reihe qualifiziert. Hauptsächlich spielt das Geschehen im Winter, wenn die Nächte kälter werden, der Frost kommt und der bevorstehende Schneefall schon in der Luft zu schmecken ist. Auch Jenny liegt diese Zeit, doch dieses Jahr ist alles anders, denn die Angst wegen ihres schwindendem Augenlicht lähmt die junge Frau beinahe in ihrem Sein. So zieht sie sich immer mehr zurück und lernt über das Internet den ehemaligen Mieter ihrer derzeitigen Wohnung kennen, einen Fotografen. Ausschweifende Chats dem diesem vertrauten Fremden sind für Jenny die sicherste und einfachste Art ihr soziales Leben nicht ganz zu versenken. Mit der Liebe für ihren Job als Mikrobioligin macht ihre Krankheit ihr noch mehr Angst, denn sie wird ihr alles rauben. Ihr Therapeut Evan ist in der Zeit scheinbar ihr einziges Ventil und lernt die wütende, frustrierte, sture Jenny kennen. Und plötzlich steht sie den Gefühlen für zwei Männer gegenüber, dabei könnten sie beide nicht unterschiedlicher sein. Und während Jenny versucht herauszufinden was sie wirklich will, hat der Leser hier einige Vermutungen. Auch ich war mir Sicher ich wüsste wie das ganze endet und dann ... war ich es auf einmal nicht mehr, denn es gab einfach nichts, was meine Vorahnung für das Ende auch nur ansatzweise unterstrichen hätte. Es handelt sich also um eine gut verpackte Geschichte, in der vor allem Jennys Krankheit sehr vordergründig ist. Die Zuneigung, die sie für Evan und C, den geheimnisvollen Fotografen, entwickelt, machen sie nur noch konfuser und so finden wir uns im Strudel der unterschiedlichsten Gefühle einer bisher sehr rationalen jungen Frau wieder. Besonders gefiel mir der Schreibstil der Autorin, die Art wie sie Dinge ausdrückt, die Melancholie in ihren Worten und auch, wie die Charaktere ausgearbeitet wurden. Die Idee mit dem schwindenden Augenlicht ist ebenfalls neu für mich, denn es ist kein Punkt der oft in Geschichten vorkommt. Ein bisschen geärgert habe ich mich über diverse längen zum Ende der Geschichte, denn ich bin der Meinung, dass all das Chaos viel schneller hätte aufgelöst werden können und sie hätten gleich viel schneller glücklich und zufrieden bis an ihr Lebensende leben können. Aber das ist nur eine Kleinigkeit.

[Clio Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best holiday novella I've ever read, and possibly the best novella, full stop. Jenny, a microbiologist who makes her living viewing tiny organisms under a high powered microscope, moves across the country to become a research scholar, and then almost immediately receives a life-changing medical diagnosis:
she's going blind.

While working through the stages of grief related to her condition, and adjusting to her new job and new city, Jenny strikes up a serendipitous cyber relationship with the former tenant of her apartment. After several innocuous online interactions, their relationship turns to very spicy cyber sex, which is both a physical and an emotional refuge for Jenny, who is lonely and tending toward depression.

Meanwhile, Jenny also has sexual tension developing in her contentious relationship with her occupational therapist, Evan, whose job it is to help her adjust to the new reality necessitated by her medical condition.

The reader realizes much sooner than Jenny that Evan and her online lover are one and the same, and when Evan realizes and doesn't immediately tell Jenny, that could have been a huge turnoff for me (I hate intentional dishonesty tropes), and yet Mary Ann Rivers negotiates that plot twist deftly enough that both characters' motivations and reactions are both relatable and ethical.

The writing is hauntingly beautiful. I'll be thinking about this story long after finishing it, and I'll definitely read it again -- perhaps every Christmas season.

[Meagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was introduced to Mary Ann Rivers by reading the novella The Story Guy, which was getting some really good buzz from romance readers. I'm always a bit skeptical of novellas, especially in romance (they always try to jam an entire relationship in too few pages, and it so rarely works), but some readers I trusted liked it so I decided to give it a try. And Mary Ann Rivers converted me. That novella was so packed with history and feels and steamy romance and character development, and she did it all in an economy of pages. So I now know it can be done. It usually isn't, but it can be.

On a whim, I checked her author page on GoodReads to see if she had anything new, and lo! I had missed this one. I downloaded it posthaste, and was super excited that it was a winter story. I hate summer. I hate summer. Give me giant snowflakes and a cold wind any day. And once again I got a novella packed with feels and a super hot romance. And it reminded me that The Story Guy scared me for a while. It was based on a premise that could easily go sideways and become creepy. So was Snowfall. But this time I trusted that Rivers wouldn't do the creepy thing. She's got the skill to skirt the creepy thing and make sure it stays a strange but romantic thing.

Also, I love a good story of nerd love. Mary Ann Rivers: one not to miss!

[Ea_reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this soon after it came out, and I've just re-read it close to 2 years later. I am in love with this book and with Mary Ann Rivers's writing and story-telling. I don't understand how it doesn't have more ratings/reviews or how it's not above a 4 star average. It's beautiful.

I feel like the book hit me with all the feels on the first read; it was just as powerful the second time, and since I knew all the basic plot points, there were small things that hit me even more on the re-read. So many details around the theme of what we see and how we see it, both literally and figuratively. Cameras and photographs, microscopes, seeing the big picture and the details, seeing beyond the thing immediately facing you, seeing someone through the internet vs seeing them in person, holding people at a distance vs letting them in.

Gah, go read it! (Also, yay, women in science! And, yay, men who love intelligent women!)

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hooked the moment I read her rain behind Christmas lights but the writing style is so very different from your usual sexually fueled novellas, very much belongs more in a Martel novel and I spent most of the time trying to decide if I was actually enjoying it out not but I finished it so clearly I didn't hate it. I have vision loss so J's experience really tugged at some strings. But the analogies and description were so spot on.

Kinda keen to read a full length novel by Rivers after this.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good. Such a rich story, packed with feels. I loved Jenny, her fierce intelligence and resilience. And Evan, her occupational therapist and more. Their love story was so, so good. The anticipation built up so well. I loved that Jenny accepting and loving herself was as important as loving Evan. This isn’t a light read - my eyes were leaking the entire time - but it is so worth it.

Bought from kobo

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing, touching and uplifting story. Love the hero. A great heroine too. Both strong and vulnerable at the Sam time. Wow.

MAR has a unique voice and an original way with language. I feel that I have to re-read the book to get a deeper appreciation of her language.

More than 5 stars.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another beautifully crafted novella by Mary Ann Rivers. My second purchase of a story by this author and I hope more people who love a story where the connection with the characters is so intense you want to reach out and hug them. The happiness and joy is real. Sexy spice with love...it just does not get any better and this author is one of my favorites now.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5
Amazingly sweet story with just the right amount of heat and humor. Slight You've Got Mail theme.

Half a star taken because the extensive inner monologues got a bit irritating. They got so long that I lost track of the conversation and had to go back a page or two to remember what was last spoken.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book i think was slow to getting to the point of the book. I did enjoy reading the story because Jenny was trying to over come thing in her life and Evan was trying to help her. I think that there needs to be another one because the author left it open at the ending.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read and reviewed as part of the Heating Up the Holidays bundle.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Initial read after its release in Fall 2015.

I'm going to reread this lovely novella (one of my favorites) every year at Christmas.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely.

[Jo Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first book or novella by this author but I thought it was a good story.