Heating Up The Holidays

Heating Up The Holidays
Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

My Review:
Play With Me by Lisa Renee Jones
I had trouble reading this story. The initial third of this story seemed so complicated, trying to lay the ground work for the intrigue. I had trouble keeping everything straight. There were a lot of names and hints but no real clear path of what the story is going to turn into.

This story was written in first person, so it was a little harder to understand the Instra-Lust that Kali and Damion were generating. These two barely speak to each other after their initial meeting and they still just know somehow that they're attracted to each other. I felt that through Kali's eyes, these two were barely ever on the same screen at the same time. I didn't really feel like I knew Damion at all.

I ended up not really caring for Kali that much. There was this whole complicated mess of “things aren't what they seem” and Kali needs to watch and report, but don't trust anyone, but you haven't even actually started your job yet. She's supposed to be all tough and assertive, but it felt like she really just let everyone push her around.

And this story has so much setup: lots of characters, lots of intrigue. Then it just seemed to sort of end. “These are the greedy bad guys. Now we have love. All is great.” I felt it was a lot of lead up that I had to slough through without any real payoff at the end.

Snowfall by Mary Ann Rivers
I think this story just took more concentration than my brain wanted to put in. It was interesting and the characters were well written, but there were so many technical biological science terms that I had to read each word really slowly to understand what they were talking about. If you're a medical or biological science professional, you'll probably have a really good time with this one. Once the setup was finished, the story started to pick up and be a lot more interesting and I really do like the writing.

Jenny is a very charismatic, emotional character from a Barbra Streisand movie. She emotes so clearly with all of her being. Whether she's feeling depressed, angry, needy or happy, it comes through loud and clear in the story. Not just the writing itself but the actions behind each emotion are really clear. It is hard that for the bulk of the story she is very sad and depressed. It really wore down on my own mood while I was reading.

Evan is a good solid character. Sort of vulnerable and a straight up kind of guy. He didn't have as large of a presence to me as Jenny did. But he'd totally fit in to my movie mind with Jeff Bridges.

I'm pretty sure my movie roles are a bit too old for this book, but it did remind me a lot of The Mirror Has Two Faces, baring the whole medical verbiage. It's good when you're ok feeling sad and nice to have a happy resolution at the end, but most likely you'll still leave feeling down.

After Midnight by Serena Bell
This one was definitely my favorite story in the collection. Nora and Miles were the most relatable to me. They could have benefited from a longer story (this one felt like their relationship was a bit rushed). It felt like they jumped really fast from “we barely know each other” to “I'm somewhat co-dependent”. But I liked how their relationship blossomed and they were both very likeable. I liked how the story ended and how each of the characters were able to own their problems and deal with them.

In the middle of the story when Nora was being all co-dependent, I was starting to cringe about how they were going to resolve their issues. Sort of an “oh no, now she's going to subsume her existence into his because 'he needs her'”. But it didn't go that way and I was so proud. Nora was strong enough to stand up for herself at the end and figure out who she was. Both Nora and Miles were able to get to the point where they healed themselves, but liked being together.

So, I think overall these stories were too short. For the first two, they would have benefited from being able to spread out the information dump over more time so I wouldn't have felt so overwhelmed. For the last story, it would have been nice to see them interact in a healthy way over a longer period of time.