Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Magical Moments
AUTHOR: Carrie Joyce
PUBLISHER: The Penny Drops Press
LENGTH: 86 pages
RELEASE DATE: Decmeber 6, 2021
BLURB:
Get set for some magic this Christmas at Holly Ranch. When Caleb Wyatt returns home to his family’s ranch for Christmas, he has only one thing on his mind: avoiding Noah Baker.
Caleb
I knew returning home to the family ranch after ten years living in the city was going to be hard. But I underestimated how many memories that place would bring up for me. Good memories of lazy days, and horse riding, and of Noah Baker.
If I could just manage to avoid Noah that would make things a lot easier.
Because having to come face to face with the man I’d left a decade earlier was less than ideal. I’m a strong person, but it takes one hell of a man to resist a cowboy like Noah Baker.
I only have to last three days and then I’ll be out of there and ready to take up my position as Partner at my law firm. Surely, I can manage three days on the ranch?
Noah
Managing Holly Ranch for the Wyatt family is my job. But the ranch itself is home. A place filled with so many memories, some I wished I could forget. Like the ones that involved Caleb Wyatt. Especially those ones.
I couldn’t bring myself to think about those times. So much happiness and love and then… then he left.
Life was going just fine for me at the ranch until Caleb decides to return for Christmas, dragging up the past, and a bunch of feelings I didn’t want to feel.
That man had walked away and never looked back. There was no way I was letting him get under my skin again. Hell no.
Three days and he’d be gone again.
I could handle three days, couldn’t I?
Sparks fly when Caleb and Noah comes face to face. With a mountain of history between them, can a stubborn lawyer and a rough and ready rancher find their way back to each other?
Magical Moments is a M/M holiday romance Novella in the Holly Ranch series. Join Caleb and Noah for a Christmas filled with meddling family, sherry-fueled grandparents, mayhem in the haybarn, waddling ducks, and some sugary-sweet, magical moments.
REVIEW:
Hmmmm. Well there were quite a few niggles here. This is my first experience with this author and I’m not sure what I expected. I really had to suspend disbelief that someone would be 4 hours away from their family and not see them in person for 10 years – but facetime and be in contact? A grandparent would not go to see their only grandchild but they had a relationship with their own child who is the parent? I just don’t find that believable at all – so that set up a whole bunch of other questions. I can’t figure out where this is supposed to take place, and I am assuming that the author is not based in the US because the idiom is not American and the phrasing is very much UK rather than US, which might seem strange to America readers at it seems like it’s supposed to take place in a US locale? Also, I work at a law firm – and someone who is 10 years out of HS would never be up for partner 🙂 It takes 7 years for undergrad and law school. And nobody makes partner in 3 years. If the kid is 5, then the father would have been 23 and in law school (along with the mother if I read the story right) and they would have just met, so the timeline is off too. Anyway, I just didn’t connect with the characters.
Caleb wasn’t terribly likable given the way he treated Noah and his entire family. He did seem to love his son although he seemed to have difficulty balancing his life after the loss of the child’s mother. I know my sister would come to wherever I was and kick my ass if I didn’t come home or talk to my best friend – and given that Lolly seems to take no crap from anyone, I found a lot of dissonance with all these characters. And you have grandparents who are in their 90s that you actually care about and are 4 hours away but you don’t visit? I had a lot of empathy for Noah – and I was really surprised that ten years later he would not make Caleb work a hell of a lot harder to get back in his good graces. I found that situation pretty unbelievable as well as Caleb’s parents just let that go as well. They wait ten years to call him on the carpet? Wow those parents have the patience of Job. I did enjoy the epilogue, but it was everything that led up to it that I just found so hard to swallow. As usual YMMV, but I was somewhat underwhelmed and there are lot of other holiday stories out this year 😉
RATING:
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