Jaqueline Snowe

Christmas Sweater Weather by Jaqueline Snowe
Contemporary holiday romance. Brother’s best friend troupe, aka forbidden love. Sports related via coaching.
Charlotte Calhoun has always had a crush on her brother’s best friend Hayden. She avoids him now at all cost, after he rejected a pass from her at 21. Driving into a huge snow bank on the way to her brother’s combined bachelor bachelorette weekend and getting recused by Hayden was not on her bingo card. But she will have to make it work. Her brother and his fiancee are important to her.
Hayden Porter has been attracted to Charlotte all her adult years but as his best friend’s little sister, she’s off limits. With both of them in the wedding party and staying in adjoining rooms at the cozy holiday decorated hotel, he’s not going to be able to distance himself as usual. Especially when Charlotte is on board with taking their relationship to the next level and keeping it behind closed doors. Neither want to distract the bride and groom at their special events. Plus he’s a single father with a full time college coaching job and she’s a high school teacher working towards a coaching career. Discretion is required. Hiding their new relationship though, might be more difficult than either expected.

I read much slower the more I like a book, the banter or characters. I loved the writing in this story and found myself reading a couple of pages and putting it down. Not because I was busy or bored, but unconsciously trying to make it last longer. It hit all the right spots for me. My favorite troupe, a secret crush on both sides, fun banter and absurd situations. And, of course, some steamy interludes. An all around joyful and romantic story. A few tears of happiness for me as the sentimental snuck in too.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley.… (more)

Cami is a college senior. She's worked hard these past few years, but now it seems like everything's falling apart. She expected to be made captain of her school's dance team, but instead that position is given to a junior. She's being temporarily moved out of the dream on-campus apartment she saved up for and into a co-ed dorm with no air conditioning. To top it all off, she also learns she's missing a couple required classes and will end up having a heavier course load than expected.

All her life, Cami has projected a certain image - she's cool, strong, and confident. She's proud of her body and her abilities, and she's used to ignoring other people's assumptions about her. However, she's recently started to realize that the assumptions made about her have negatively affected others in her life, such as her twin sister.

Freddie is an engineering student who's had a crush on Cami for a while, but an incident a year ago taught him that girls like her don't fall for guys like him. His ex-girlfriend underscored that message by dumping him for being too boring. Now Cami's living in the dorm room next to his, and as he gets to know her better, he realizes he may have misjudged her.

My description is choppy and not very good, but I'm not really in the mood to try to fix it. Basically, both Cami and Freddie had stuff going on outside of their attraction to each other that was complicating their lives. Cami struggled with feeling alone and was prone to self-destructive behavior (drinking, partying, doing risky things, etc.) as a way of dealing with her negative emotions. Dance was the thing that grounded her, so not becoming her team's captain really shook her. Meanwhile, Freddie was applying for internships and worried about disappointing his family if he didn't intern at his uncle's company.

This was one of my purchases at the latest Book Bonanza. One of the people at her table said "nerdy guy and popular girl," and I just decided to go for it.

It took about half the book for Cami and Freddie to really grow on me. With Freddie, part of what won me over was seeing him be a genuinely nice and supportive guy even when he was feeling embarrassed or hurt. With Cami, it took seeing her do difficult things for the sake of her dance team. If you're a fan of Legally Blonde (which is referenced at least a time or two in the book), there's a really nice part where Cami's team shows their support for her that made me think of that movie and Elle's sorority sisters - the difference here was that Cami didn't realize they'd come forward and support her like that. I saw more of Happy Death Day's Tree Gelbman in Cami than Legally Blonde's Elle Woods, though.

Snowe's writing style didn't really appeal to me, but I ended up liking Cami and Freddie and the way things were handled with the dance team enough that I might take a look through her backlist and try something else with tropes I generally like.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (more)