Review by Sadonna

TITLE:  The Santa Project

SERIES:  2019 Advent Calendar – Homemade for the Holidays

AUTHOR:  Elinor Gray

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH:  60 pages

RELEASE DATE:  December 1, 2019

BLURB:

Working at the Craft Emporium keeps Adam Martinez busy during the holiday season he absolutely hates. Enter elementary schoolteacher David Okoye, who can’t get enough of Christmas or craft supplies. David is cute, wholesome, and Adam can’t deny a little bit of a crush.

Making the holidays special for his students is only part of the reason David makes excuses to go to the Craft Emporium. He also holds a torch for Adam. He takes it as a personal challenge to show Adam how to enjoy the holidays when he asks Adam to teach him to knit. David promises the holidays can be wonderful when shared with the right people, but how can they share them when David is going home to his family and Adam will be left all alone?

A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2019 Advent Calendar “Homemade for the Holidays.”

REVIEW:

Adam hates Christmas.  He volunteers to work as much as he can so at leaat he has something to keep his mind busy during the season.  He works at a craft store – which is of course busy during the holiday period.   One of his customers, David, is an elementary teacher and he seems to be in the store constantly purchasing arts and crafts supplies for his classroom.  They have a little bit of flirtation going on.

A couple weeks before Christmas they serendipitiously meet in a coffee shop. They get to talking about just why Adam seems to hate Christmas and David decides he’s going to make it his mission to get Adam to like the holiday season 🙂  And Adam will teach David to knit – as he admires Adam’s hand knit sweaters he’s always wearing.  They go to the tree lighting and festival and work together on a philanthropic endeavor that David runs each year.  While Adam admits that he enjoys these things, as Christmas gets closer and David’s trip to Philadelphia means that Adam will be spending Christmas alone – or with a couple of friends having Chinese food – he becomes more distant.  David tries to see him before leaving town but that doesn’t work out either.  Maybe it’s just meant to be that Adam is not going to ever enjoy Christmas, despite David’s best efforts 😉

This is a pretty cute story.  I liked both Adam and David.  David is cute in his flirtation with Adam – trying to get him to go out with him and also trying to get him into the season.  I get that Adam’s had a bit of a rough time with the holidays over the years, and he was making progress only to lose himself again.  David and his family seem to really have it together.  I did like what little bit we saw of them.  Adam seems a little bit stuck in his life and maybe David is just the thing to get him to move forward.  Short and sweet with a nice ending.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Amazon

Dreamspinner Press