Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Love Blooms
AUTHOR: Stephanie Hoyt
PUBLISHER: NineStar Press
LENGTH: 61,800 Words
RELEASE DATE: December 10, 2018
BLURB:
Nico Hamurişi is the one and only son of Santa Claus. All his life, Nico has known he’s expected to fall in love and find lifelong commitment by the Christmas of his thirtieth year—like every other heir before him. But knowing and accepting are vastly different things, and as the final countdown begins, Nico has yet to embrace his fate. His once great enthusiasm for eventually becoming Santa has been dimmed by uncertainty over how the Santa Line will be affected when he marries a man.
With only a year left, will Nico have time to find love and commitment all while learning how magic will transform the family line to accommodate who he is and who he loves?
REVIEW:
Nico has lived his life with the pressure of knowing that he must find his true love by Christmas of his thirtieth year. That means he has precisely one year left to find the lucky guy before he misses his chance to complete the “Santafication” process, which would mean the end of the Santa Claus line. When he meets Elliott he thinks he might actually make the deadline, but of course, it can’t be that easy.
This book was hard to rate, because there were some aspects that I loved and others that just didn’t work for me. I really enjoyed the emotional turmoil that Nico experienced around the prospect of “having to fall in love”. The pressure that he was dealing with and the question of whether he was truly doing it for love or if the Santa magic was forcing the issue was well explored and allowed for some understandably dramatic reactions. The sense that he had no control of his destiny was the prevailing theme of the story, and although I honestly enjoyed that aspect, and think the author did a great job of conveying Nico’s conflict…I don’t know. Maybe the author did too good a job because I really didn’t feel the relationship between the Nico and Elliott had any depth to it. Maybe Nico’s inner monologuing made me doubt their “true love” status too, but the only scene that actually got my emotions revving was the mandatory breakup scene where Nico poured out all of his feelings about his forced destiny to Elliott.
I liked the secondary characters and appreciated that Santa was a bit of an ass as a father. Almost like Nico, as his son, came second to the Santa legacy. I’ve never read a story that showed Santa as anything other than perfect, but seeing him as a parent who has screwed up was sort of nice.
I’m not sure if this story was part of a series or world that I’m unaware of, or if it’s going to become part of a series, but if not then it seemed superfluous to include the idea that everyone had a magical ability. Like, all humans could do something magical, not just Santa’s family. The idea wasn’t integral to the story, and really didn’t go anywhere. In fact it only confused me as I tried to figure out why I needed to know that.
While I can’t say that this story worked for me as a romance, it was still an enjoyable read with some great characters.
RATING: 
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