Publisher: WOLF Publishing
Format: ebook
Release Date:
Genre: Romance – Regency – Christmas
Goodreads
Part of Naughty or Nice: A Holiday Regency Anthology
I will do a full review for the anthology as a whole once all finished, but each of these seven also serves as a standalone novella – as far as I can tell, most of these are linked into longer-running series’ by the authors – and if the first novella, Once Upon an Aggravatingly Heroic Kiss, is anything to go by, I’m going to be adding a fair few to my TBR! And I wanted to get my thoughts on each story down before moving to the next one.
As suggested by the anthology’s title, this anthology is made up of Regency Holiday Romances, and Bree Wolf’s tale starts the anthology off really strong. Edie just wants to see her best friend married to a man she loves, instead of following through on the arranged marriage planned by her parents. But she’s slightly distracted from her task by Jasper, a handsome gentleman, who seems to read her better than anyone else.
This is very much an instalove story, with Edie’s meddling and focus on her friend preventing her and Jasper from making a full connection. My main complaint here would be the lack of tension between the two – of course the couple will end up together, but it felt almost a bit too easy to see it happening. Any possible obstacles felt brushed over too easy. It was always a question of when, not if, and I prefer romances when there’s a little more conflict, tension or obstacles.
Still, it was a sweet novella and quite fun to see Edie’s scheming, wondering what she’s going to do next and just how she’s going to rope Jasper into things. The main couple were sweet together, and the secondary couples added some good characters into the mix, too. I really loved the Christmas setting here, as it played a large part with the characters all in the same place for those couple of weeks, and the different Christmas traditions giving Edie some fun opportunities to help out her friend.
A fun story to start the anthology, and one that definitely encourages the reader towards Bree Wolf’s series.
Unwrapping Words 