Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: The Christmas Deal
AUTHOR: Keira Andrews
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 250 pages
RELEASE DATE: November 14, 2019
BLURB:
Will fake boyfriends become the real deal this holiday?
It’s the most wonderful time of the year—except ex-Marine Logan is jobless and getting evicted. Worse, he’s a new single dad with a stepson who hates him. A kid needs stability—not to mention presents under the tree—and Logan’s desperate.
Then he meets lonely Seth and makes a deal.
Can Logan temporarily pretend to be live-in boyfriends to increase Seth’s chances at a promotion? If it provides a roof over their heads for the holidays, hell yeah. Logan considers himself straight—he doesn’t count occasional hookups with guys—but he can fake it. Besides, with his shy little smile, Seth is surprisingly sexy.
Make that damn sexy.
Shocked that Seth has only been with one man, Logan can’t resist sweetening their deal to teach him the joys of casual sex. No strings attached. No feelings. No kissing.
No falling for each other.
Easy, right?
The Christmas Deal is a steamy holiday gay romance novel from Keira Andrews featuring fake boyfriends, bisexual awakening, a clueless single dad with an angry preteen, and of course a happy ending.
REVIEW:
Logan’s life is going from bad to worse. He’s a widower with Connor, a surly and bitter teenage stepson (who wouldn’t be losing their mother). Connor’s acting out, nearly getting expelled from his school and lashing out. Logan has leaned hard on his sister Jenna during this period and he feels completely useless and worthless. He desperately needs a job and a place to live.
Seth works with Jenna and they are also friends. When their new company owner visits, Jenna jumps at the chance to help both Seth and her brother – but boy does that get away from them fast. Seth needs to present the image of a family man and Logan and Connor need a place to land and it all kind of falls together – in a caper 😉
Seth has been rejected by his family – in an incredibly cruel way – because he’s gay. Logan hasn’t ever dated a guy, but he’s gotten off with guys before and he and Seth fall into a sort of guest with benefits pattern. But then feelings start to get in the way. They have to keep up the ruse for the boss because Seth’s promotion depends on it, but it all starts to feel too real. They dance around each other for quite a while, but Logan really wants Seth to feel good and safe. He’s royally pissed on Seth’s behalf for how his family has treated him and taken a lot of the joy of life from him – particularly around Christmas. And around sex.
As they continue their fake relationship at a mandatory company retreat just before Christmas, things get real fast. Logan is terrified that he’s going to screw up again like he did with Connor’s mom, but he really wants things to be Ok with Seth and with Connor. When a new tragedy unfolds, everybody decides to get real and talk about how they really feel.
So I really struggled with the first third of this story. I didn’t particularly like or care about any of the characters – except for Jenna. But then something happened about that time that made me look at both Logan and Seth with new eyes. Logan was very rough around the edges, and I’m not necessarily drawn to that type. Seth was wound really tight. I ended up really liking Angela, the new boss. She had a terrible way of kind of objectifying and fetishizing Logan and Seth at some points, but then she was real with parenting advice and truly caring, so I got over that. Jenna was the best and even Logan’s dad got with the program. In the end, I really liked the way these guys worked things out and it made for a happy and satisfying ending.
RATING: 
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