Reviewed by Danielle
Title: Home for the Holidays (Anthology)
Authors: Jenna Kendrick, Heather C Leigh, Felice Stevens, SJ Himes, Liv Rancourt
Publisher: Self Published
Length: 329 Pages
Blurbs:
Home can be a person as well as a place. Everyone deserves a home for the holidays, as the stories in this collection affirm.
The Eighth Night by Jenna Kendrick
Going home for the holiday only to find his parents have made other plans, Kai Meyers is thrilled to reunite with an old friend. Disowned by his religious family, Ari Fisher is used to being treated like a boy toy rather than a boyfriend, and now he only has eight days to reveal his secrets to Kai.
24-Hour Hold by Heather C. Leigh
Detectives Damon Porter and Anderson Malloy are now partners at Denver’s Major Case Unit. The problem is, they used to be boyfriends, and now they’re feeling anything but friendly towards each other.
Learning to Love by Felice Stevens
Returning home for the holiday, caterer Gideon Marks tried hard to push away his high school crush. But Rabbi Jonah Fine wouldn’t let him run again, or keep the secret Gideon’s tried so desperately to hide.
Saving Silas by SJ Himes
Paramedic Gael Dominic wasn’t expecting much from the holidays. Blood, death, and loneliness were constants. So when tragedy puts a wounded Silas in his path, Gael takes a chance on his alleyway angel and love.
Christmas in LaLa Land by Liv Rancourt
For a Danaan sidhe like Aron, touching a human has consequences, while Damian’s hiding some serious scars behind his smile. A holiday trip to LA forces them to choose between acting on their attraction or giving up on love because of the past.
Proceeds from Home for the Holidays are being donated to the Ali Forney Center in New York City to help homeless LGBTQ youth.
REVIEW:
Let me start with the mention that this is a wonderful anthology. I am not really an anthology person but I am a sucker for a good holiday story and with the wonderful cause I was most pleased to read and review this anthology.
The Eight Night
Fantastic story and what a beginning! Only one problem, it was too short. There was so much more there and I can only hope that the author will decide to make this into a novella perhaps for next years holiday season. I connected immediately with these characters as both Ari and Kai are such interesting personalities. Their story is cute yet interesting and very fascinating to read. So much emotion and background story there. Like I said I really regretted the shortness of this the quick wrap up where there could have been so much more or at least given more attention too.
Rating : 
24-Hour Hold
Ooh good and bad cop or a little something like that. The sexual Chemistry is off the charts here in this story. Author Heather Leigh did an amazing job in keeping the fight vs attraction very vivid and attractive to read. Damon is such a Mister Hard Guy but “Ace” Anderson knows a different side of him and that is the reason he came back. Trying to find a way to get through to Damon like he did when they were young and trying to set right what went wrong and trying to find what he has been missing in his life. But let’s just say Damon is not waiting for that to happen and Ace has his work cut out for him because Damon isn’t even considering letting Anderson in. Great story had me enthralled from the first word to the last.
Rating: 
Learning to Love
Awww this is how a holiday story should be in my opinion, no matter if it is centered around Christmas or Chanukah. Author Felice Stevens drafts a wonderful story about love, acceptance, family and comfort. When Gideon gets hired to cater the Shabbos dinner for his former synagogue he wants to prove himself and show that he made something of his life in the years he was away shredding the bad boy image. He wants to show he is worthy of catering the Chanukah dinner. Finding out that Jonah, the man he was had a secret crush on all those years ago, is the new Rabbi and that he lives there shakes Gideon to his core especially when he finds out after an unexpected encounter that he is also openly gay. Gideon has some secrets he isn’t willing to share and thanks to his right hand man “Rico” he has managed to keep them secret for so long. (Can I say that I definitely there will be a story about Rico in the future) In the end it comes down to trust and love and working out how to deal with both. The beautiful epilogue brought something extra to an already wonderful story.
Rating: 
Saving Silas
What is not to love about this story? It is the weak vs the strong…the “angel” and the caretaker. Hard to resist something so nice. I did have some small issues with this mainly what I would call the gangster passages in the story. Where I was ok with the story line of the broken victim. the portraying of the abusive father was like a gangster where he had a very respectable job etc. I loved the interaction between Gael and his “Angel” though, the love they share, the connection is brimming. Silas is broken but Gael is perhaps the one who is even more broken on the inside . The author did a wonderful job in putting back the pieces in both characters. The end was a bit too much in my opinion but in the end I can say I really enjoyed this story also.
Rating :
Christmas in LaLa Land
I am not going to mention too much about this story simply because it just wasn’t for me at all. To a point where I don’t understand why this story was placed in this anthology because it just doesn’t fit. Not because of my taste and feelings about it but just if you compare all the stories. This story is fantasy, very unreal even for fantasy levels and for me the read very difficult. I will address some things in my overall comment.
Rating: 
Overall:
What can I say. I had read the first 4 stories and was ecstatic that I picked up this book. Not being an anthology person I really enjoyed all 4 stories I read and drafted out my review already.So I just had to add my 5th review and it was done. I even had the overall piece done convinced it wouldn’t change that much after completing the whole anthology. But then I read the 5th story and I was like what just happened? I mean, after reading 4 contemporary stories I was like am I reading a story from the same anthology? I am still confused how this story ended up in this particular anthology. Let me make clear if you are a fantasy lover there’s a good chance you would see different things than me and understand some parts definitely better than I did, but for me it didn’t make sense so that is why I questioned its inclusion.
The next thing was that I started to wonder about was what should I do with the overall rating. Do I let 1 story out of 5 weigh that high on an overall rating so that it would drop? (normally I would sum up the 5 ratings split them and have an overall rating) Not being comfortable with that I decided to kind of take the middle way. Yes the rating dropped slightly (from 4.5 to 4) but still expressed the fact that I really liked this anthology and would recommend it.
RATING:
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