MM Romance
Childhood Friends To Lovers/Christmas
2 Stars ⭐️
This read just like a cheesy yet awkward Hallmark Christmas movie and while I didn’t hate it, I can’t say I liked it all that much either. I probably would have DNF’d this but kept at it because this book takes place in and around Sacramento, California, *our* state capital, a city I’ve been to lots of times plus I live about 90 minutes north of there so I liked reading about a place I know so well. This takes a place during Christmas and mentions an event called Victorian Christmas that happens in the town right next to me. It’s a small town zany event where the townspeople dress up in clothes from the 1800’s, sing carols, roast chestnuts, have food/drinks, shop and they close the streets off for horse drawn carriages etc. I’m not a huge fan of the holidays but this event is fun and sometimes it’s snowing which adds to the magic.
This is a childhood friends to lovers story which is one of my favorite tropes but this just wasn’t executed all that well. I just finished this book and can’t remember either character’s name 🤣 which should really convey my excitement while reading this. But ok, had to go look it up and this book is entirely from Andy’s POV which was part of the reason I started skimming because while this is a short book at around 190 pages, his POV was just kind of boring.
Andy goes home to his small town for the holidays and runs into his old friend group and has a drink with them. They end up drinking tequila all night and when Andy wakes up the next day it’s obvious something happened between him and his childhood bestie, Link, but he can’t remember what. Link won’t tell Andy what happened and wants him to figure it out himself. These two have always been close but lost touch over the years so Andy is surprised to have such an attraction to his old friend now. Link starts to visit Andy in Sacramento blah blah and they rekindle their friendship and become more than friends while Andy works out what Link won’t tell him from that night.
Because we are only in Andy’s POV, this story dragged quite a bit and had a lot of telling but not showing. The author would tell the reader conversations Andy and Link would have together as a summary instead of just showing the conversation. When it was shown, it was a lot of “Remember When this happened as kids…” so it was hard to get invested in two characters that felt one dimensional. I knew Link was really nice and sweet and gave thoughtful presents and Andy had incredible work ethic opening his own salon in Sac but other than that, I couldn’t tell you a thing about either of them. This is a slow burn but in a weird way as these two kiss, hold hands and even sleep together naked but don’t do anything sexual until 91% and even then it felt like they had no chemistry whatsoever because the act was summarized and not shown. I believed they were friends but I never saw how they became more than friends and that was my issue.