Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: The Captain’s Cornish Christmas
SERIES: Captivating Captains #4
AUTHOR: Catherine Curzon and Eleanor Harkstead
PUBLISHER: Pride Publishing
LENGTH: 38 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 11, 2018
BLURB:
For a lonely Cornish lifeboatman and an author who’s more used to crime scenes than love scenes, this Christmas is going to be very merry indeed!
When Jago Treherne agrees to man the Polneath lifeboats one snowy Christmas, he knows he can forget turkey and all the trimmings.
Yet when he boards a seemingly empty yacht and stumbles upon sexy Sam Coryton enjoying an energetic afternoon below decks, Jago soon realizes that he might be unwrapping a very different sort of Christmas gift this year!
REVIEW:
I’ve been a fan of Curzon and Harkstead’s Captivating Captains series since the first book, and this story brings back what I enjoyed most about the works—a stoic, authoritative man learning how to ease off himself and fall in love with someone.
This is a short story, so we don’t get to know lifeboat captain Jago or mystery author Sam as well as we would if they got a longer novel, but their chemistry is apparent from page one. They’re both local men who relate to their Cornish roots in different ways, and the warmth they get from being at home for the holidays translates wonderfully to a passionate romance (even if that romance started with an interrupted private moment).
I’m less of a fan of the “insta-love” that blossoms before the story comes to a close. Jago and Sam’s dynamic seems to be so easy and affable that the ardent declarations of love (during sex, naturally) seem absurd rather than swoon-worthy. I can buy that these two will fall in love—but I think it would take more than one night, even a good one.
There’s a perfect amount of soft, quiet, Christmastime emotion in this story. It may contain scenes of boats crashing on a cold surf, but in the end, it invites you into a big, warm bed where you can watch the snow pile up outside the window. I didn’t totally fall for the super-fast romance, but the atmosphere so perfectly encapsulates the holiday season.
RATING: 
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