Day 3

Reviewed by Donna

TITLE:A Snowman Made of Sand

SERIES: Dreamspinner  press advent calendar 2014 Celebrate

AUTHOR: J.J. Carroll

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 37Pages

BLURB:

Last year in England, Australian Ethan Harvey not only met his “perfect” man in Tristan Lewin-Jones, Ethan shared a wonderful Christmas with Tristan’s “perfect” family—an ideal British holiday full of genteel good cheer and all the traditional trimmings.

Now Tris and Ethan are living in Sydney, and Tris wants the quintessential Australian beach Christmas, with sun, sand, surf, seafood… and the Harveys. But Ethan didn’t mention the Harveys are politically incorrect, rude, crude, and loud. He worries his family will drive Tris away. Giving Tris the perfect beach Christmas with the imperfect Harveys is going to take a holiday miracle.

REVIEW:

Ethan and Tristan have had over a year together. A wonderfully perfect year that included a wonderfully perfect Christmas with Tristan’s wonderfully perfect family in England. But that was last year. This Christmas they’re in Sydney, near Ethan’s family, who are decidedly not so perfect.

“Last Christmas with Tristan’s family…It was matching Labradors, and wall to wall good cheer, and a picture-perfect cottage in the country, and a log fire, homemade plum pudding, a beautiful, real Christmas tree, and mistletoe – “

For the past two months, ever since Ethan and Tristan moved to Australia, Ethan has been doing everything in his power to keep his family and Tristan separate, but Tristan has had enough. He’s become convinced that Ethan has either lied about being out to his family or is ashamed of Tristan and wants to keep their relationship a secret. No matter what alternatives Ethan suggests Tristan is not going to give in and if Ethan wants to save his relationship then he will have to do the one thing that will also put it at risk – spend Christmas with his family.

Ethan, the fact is, our family is awful. Really, really awful. I get that you obviously like this guy a lot. What I don’t get is why you’d want to subject him to the combined Harvey politically incorrect funfest and drunken punch-up that is Christmas Day lunch. He’ll run a mile.”

This story has a huge cast of characters and I’m glad that the author didn’t feel the need to spend the time introducing all of them. Instead the story focuses on the two MCs plus a little of Ethan’s sister, while the other characters carry on their comedy of errors in the background. There were flashes of hilarity mixed with emotional declarations between Tristan and Ethan that balanced everything out nicely. The only thing that the story was missing was maybe the actual Christmas lunch scene. Or the present giving scene. We hear about both moments afterwards, and the incidents that occurred but it would have been better to read them as they happened.

I guess I’m stereotyping here but I think it’s pretty fair to say that Australians can be a little hard to get use to. We tend to say inappropriate things and do inappropriate things and assume that the rest of the world finds us as hilarious as we do. I’m glad the inappropriateness wasn’t edited out of this story because when characters say things like “Bugger me dead, did he really just say he was a poofter?” it just makes me chuckle and think, yep, this author is definitely Australian.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Dreamspinner Press