The girl who loves Christmas falls for the Grinch—it’s a Christmas miracle.
What started as a dumpster fire of a blind date turns into a deal.
In truth, it probably didn’t help that I showed up dressed like an elf but that’s a story for another time. Our start was rocky at best which is why it’s so frustrating that I can’t stop thinking about his sexy British accent. Or the way his chest and arms fill out his suit. Or his perfect hair with that single streak of grey at the front.
Santa likes lists and so do I, so here’s all the reasons why Andrew and I aren’t right for each other:
He’s my brother’s best friend
He’s the biggest grump I’ve ever met.
He hates Christmas.
That last one is big for a girl like me who thinks that the entire month of December should be a national holiday. So, when he calls for my help in planning his firm’s holiday party, I can’t pass up the opportunity to grow my small business. Bonus, we make a deal, and he agrees to attend three holiday events with me so I can make him fall in love with Christmas. As if I’d pass up an opportunity to make a Grinch’s heart grow three times its size.
It isn’t long until I discover Andrew has a very real reason to hate Christmas and I start to see him in a different light. That’s when the Christmas miracle begins.
| Title: | Single and Ready to Jingle |
| Author: | Piper Rayne |
| Series: | n/a |
| Pages: | 260 |
| Category / Genre(s): | Contemporary |
| Trope(s): | Christmas Enemies to Lovers Brother’s Best Friend |
| Point of View: | |
| Location: | New York, New York, USA |
| HEA: | ✔️ |
| Release Date: | 15th November, 2022 |
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Didn’t jingle my bells
A cute and fun Christmas romance between a sunshine and a grump – who just happens to be her brother’s best friend? Gimme! Unfortunately for me, it just didn’t live up to the cute premise or my expectations.
We start off with the first meeting of Kenzie and Andrew – at a disastrous blind first date that introduces our couple and lets us know about their personalities. Kenzie came across as cute, quirky, fun and someone I liked and was happy to root for. Andrew, on the other hand, was someone I took an instant dislike to. He was inherently rude, condescending and just not a particularly nice person. Oh, he definitely improved over the course of the book, but at the end – at the big incident before the HEA – he reverted to that nasty, horrible person that I fear he was at heart.
Perhaps I would have been more generous to Andrew had part of Kenzie’s story arc not been that she was a pushover who needed to stand up for herself more. However with that said, I didn’t feel that this actually married with much of her personality. Like the authors wanted her to be a certain way but Kenzie decided that wasn’t who she was at all. It didn’t make me dislike her, but it didn’t make her feel very real.
“…why bother writing a British character if you’re not going to do it properly?”
When I liked Andrew – meaning the middle of the story – there was some seriously cute chemistry between him and Kenzie. I loved the way they went from disliking each other, to finding each other intriguing to getting all the feels but keeping it quiet from the other.
For fellow Brits fearing another “British” hero in a romance novel, it’s not too bad on that front. Andrew doesn’t use too many Britishisms and they don’t feel terribly out of place when he does. There are some inaccuracies – specifically the glaring errors referring to our university system and the terminology we use. Hardly a deal-breaker but it would’ve taken 2 seconds to check the accuracy and why bother writing a British character if you’re not going to do it properly?
With all my comments and gripes, the writing was very good – the story absorbing and keeping my interest. It was a cute premise, like I said, and I liked the idea of Kenzie bringing the magic of Christmas to Andrew. I’ve enjoyed stories from Piper Rayne before, and likely will again, but this one just didn’t hit the mark for me. There were too many contrivances that made the whole thing feel a bit forced – but that would probably all have been fine had I loved the characters which I really didn’t – and it’s never a good sign to finish a romance novel and assume that the couple is never going to last. Oh well, just 3 stars from me but you can’t like ‘em all.
* I received this book in exchange for my honest review
Piper Rayne is a USA Today Bestselling author duo. Our goal is to bring you romance stories that have “Heartwarming Humor With a Side of Sizzle” (okay…you caught us, that’s our tagline). A little about us… We both have kindle’s full of one-clickable books. We’re both married to husbands who drive us to drink. We’re both chauffeurs to our kids. Most of all, we love hot heroes and quirky heroines that make us laugh, and we hope you do, too.
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