Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Santa on the Beach
SERIES: Warmest Wishes: 2018 Advent Calendar
AUTHOR: Crystel Greene
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 53 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 1, 2018
BLURB:
A Story from the Warmest Wishes: Dreamspinner Press 2018 Advent Calendar
The sexy Santa and the virgin dad….
Single dad Mario, twenty-one, has finally won shared custody of his five-year-old son, Sammy. They’re spending Christmas at a Tenerife resort to celebrate. The children’s swimming instructor, Josie, is sexy and fun, and Mario can’t stop dreaming about him. But Mario has no clue how to talk to a hot guy.
With his suntan, Speedos, and rippling abs, Josie seems to be the typical jock. He’s super sweet too, and everyone loves him. But he only has eyes for the fire-eyed little dad who looks like his son’s older brother and won’t stop policing the swimming class.
Sammy would like to be a king in the hotel’s nativity play. But he’s too afraid to go anywhere without his dad.
Mario would like a holiday romance with Josie, or even a little more, but between building his tech company and trying to do his part as Sammy’s father he has missed out on a lot and is too inexperienced to know where to begin.
Luckily Santa might have just the thing for everyone on his list…
REVIEW:
This just wasn’t what I was expecting from the blurb.
Mario is a single twenty one year old dad, on vacation in Tenerife with his five year old son Sammy, whom he has finally won partial custody of. Sammy is very clingy and Mario is a bit of a helicopter parent. He just wants his son to have fun on their Christmas vacation. Josie, the super sexy and sweet teacher at the Splash Clinic, has eyes for the shy and overprotective dad. But how can they possibly even meet when Mario is to shy and tongue tied to even speak to the man of his dreams.
One of the things that mislead me (and I hate being mislead by a book blurb) was the 21 year old virgin dad. Virgin to me means you have never had sex. Then how can Mario be a virgin if the condom malfunctioned when he was having sex with his best friend at 16. I had assumed that he had inherited the son because someone had died or something but Mario is Sammy’s biological father and had finally achieved partial custody of his son. Yes, Mario is extremely inexperienced and has never been with a man before, even though he has determined he is in fact gay, but he is not a virgin.
Another part that really, really bother me was the author having the characters trying to just get their virginity out of the way. First Mario has sex with his best friend Vicky “team up to get both our first times over with in one sitting” at sixteen. Then, after the whole book of Mario and Josie barely talking, they meet on the beach where Mario strips for Josie down to his green jockstrap complete with a reindeer design. This all takes place immediately after Josie, dressed as Santa, just gave presents out to all the children! I know they were on the beach and most of he children are off to the final play practice but the parents are still milling around and you are going at it right out in the open? Yes, they finally figured out that it might be best to take it somewhere more private so they head to Josie’s boat and have full on sex. It just seemed more like a porn scene than a responsible parent shy nerd that Mario has been portrayed as for the first 75% of the book. That just didn’t work for me. You’ve never even kissed a guy before and have only had one disastrous experience with sex and you are going at it like rabbits in a boat just off shore from a family friendly resort.
I did find it amusing that Mario finally lays it all out to his sister on a phone call only to discover that he is standing right in front of Josie’s open window. But Mario’s internal struggles went on way too long and Mario and Josie’s hookup was way to rushed. We do get the idea that this going to be more than a one night stand, with Josie moving back to London, but that’s it. There were some pretty sweet moments with Mario and Sammy that saved the book for me and I liked how sweet Josie was with the timid little boy.
RATING: 
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Really appreciate the review. Thank you!!
Thanks for the review. It took me some time to warm up to the story, but in the end I liked it a lot. Like you I think the end was a bit short-lived. There could have been more or a follow-up story.
Thanks for the review. I was wondering about the virginity thing in the blurb.
Thank you for the review. I was gonna give this one a try but I can see from your review that it won’t be something that will work for me, ‘cos the things that bugged you but you power throw them I won’t 🙁
Mmm, sometimes the very young MC stories don’t do it for me and this may be one!
Thank you for the review. Sorry it didn’t work for you.
I’ll take your review into account.
Ah, trouble on a technicality!