It may be Thanksgiving here in Canada (Happy Thanksgiving, friends!)
but I'm getting the holiday spirit going already with
Chasing Christmas Eve by
Jill Shalvis. This is the latest in her
HeartbreakerBay series but you don’t have to read the others to enjoy Colbie and Spence’s
story. Of course, if you’re like me and haven’t read them you’re probably going
to want to go back and visit the stories Shalvis has already written. That’s
how much fun and how sweet this novel was!
Meet cute...Run for the hills—temporarily.
That's Colbie Albright's plan when she flees New York for San Francisco.
Wrangling her crazy family by day and writing a bestselling YA fantasy series
by night has taken its toll. In short, Colbie's so over it that she's under it.
She's also under the waters of a historic San Francisco fountain within an hour
of arrival. Fortunately, the guy who fishes Colbie out has her looking forward
to Christmas among strangers. But she's pretty sure Spencer Baldwin won't be a
stranger for long.
Make merry...Spence's commitment to hiding from the Ghosts of Relationships Past means
he doesn't have to worry about the powerful—okay, crazy hot chemistry—he's got
with Colbie. Just because she can laugh at anything, especially herself... just
because she's gorgeous and a great listener just because she gets Spence
immediately doesn't mean he won't be able to let Colbie go. Does it?
and hope for a miracle.Now the clock's ticking for Colbie and Spence: Two weeks to cut loose. Two
weeks to fall hard. Two weeks to figure out how to make this Christmas last a
lifetime.
It was really easy to see why Spence would fall for Colbie. I loved her
too! She was smart, funny, and down to earth. She had issues – which reared
its ugly head a few times over the course of the novel – but she seemed
committed to working through them. After running away, of course. I do wish she
was more firm with her mom and brothers at the end because they really were
taking advantage of her. I get that she’s a fixer – I kind of am myself – but she
was so focused on that that she couldn’t see that maybe her life could be
different and oh so much better with Spence and San Francisco.
It was also easy to see why Colbie loved San Francisco. I’ve never been
but it’s on my travel bucket list. The area Spence and his friends live in
sounded so great and had a nice small town vibe in the middle of a big city.
Spence had a really awesome, loyal group of friends which are his
self-made family. I loved the friendship between all of them. They’re super
protective of him because other people from his past have taking advantage of
him. For the most part, that’s sweet. But sometimes their protectiveness became
a little extreme. I get that they might assume Colbie is a reporter since they
know virtually nothing about her but I also couldn’t quite see why there was so much fuss about Spence. Sure he’s crazy
smart and rich and good-looking but…I don’t understand why the media was
crawling all over him. I also really didn’t understand why Elle was so crazy
Mama Bear protective of Spence. It was honestly annoying to read and I wish
she, and some of the others, gave him the chance to fall in love instead of
blocking his relationship with Colbie whenever they could. They liked her – and
it was sweet that the ladies of the group immediately took Colbie under their
wing – but instead of allowing her to share her background in her own time,
they forced the issue.
The romance was totally believable in this story, even if it happened really quickly. Colbie and Spence had so many common personality
traits and differences where it mattered that it made so much sense for them to
fall for each other.
I’m finding that most Christmas romances these days aren’t really too
Christmassy. So it wasn’t that weird
reading a book set in the three weeks leading up to Christmas when it was October
and unseasonably warm here in Ontario. But, had I been reading this in December
and wanted a romance with all of the Christmas trimmings, I may have been
disappointed. As long as you don’t expect Santa or tinsel at every turn, I think
you’ll enjoy the hints of holiday throughout this book.
All in all, Chasing Christmas Eve
was a really nice read. Jill Shalvis is so talented at creating worlds that are
sweet and so much fun to read about. I read this one really quickly and my
heart was full at the end for Colbie and Spence. I’d consider that a win.
Excerpt
At the unexpected sight of Spence, Colbie
startled hard. How was it that he was the one who needed glasses and yet she’d
not seen him standing against the window? “No, I don’t kill a lot of people,”
she said cautiously because she was wearing only a towelin front of a strange
man. “But I’m happy to make an exception.”
He laughed, a rough rumble that was more
than a little contagious but she controlled herself because, hello, she was
once again dripping wet before the man who seemed to make her knees forget to
hold her up.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said and
pushed off the wall to come close.
She froze, but he held up his hands like, I
come in peace, and crouched at her feet to scoop up the clothes she
hadn’t realized she’d dropped.
Leggings, a long forgiving tee, and the
peach silk bra-and-panty set that hadn’t gotten so much as a blink from the TSA
guy.
But it got one out of Spence. He also
swallowed hard as she snatched them back from him.
“Hold on,” he said and caught her arm,
pulling it toward him to look at her bleeding elbow.
“Sit,” he said and gently pushed her down
to a weight bench. He vanished into the bathroom and came back out with a first
aid kit.
It took him less than two minutes to clean
and bandage the scrape. Then, easily balanced at her side on the balls of his
feet, he did the same for both her knees, which she hadn’t noticed were also
scraped up.
“You must’ve hit the brick coping as you
fell in the fountain,” he said and let his thumb slide over the skin just above
one bandaged knee.
She shivered, and not from the cold either.
“Not going to kiss it better?” she heard herself ask before biting her tongue
for running away with her good sense.
She’d raised her younger twin brothers.
Scrappy, roughhouse wild animals, the both of them, so there’d been plenty of
injuries she’d kissed over the years.
But no one had ever kissed hers. Not
surprising, since most of her injuries tended to be on the inside, where they
didn’t show. Still, she was horrified she’d said anything at all. “I didn’t mean—”
She broke off, frozen like a deer in the
headlights as Spence slowly lowered his head, brushing his lips over the
Band-Aid on her elbow, then her knees. When he lifted his head, he pushed his
glasses higher on his nose, those whiskey eyes warm and amused behind his
lenses. “Better?”
Shockingly better. Since she didn’t quite
trust her voice at the moment, she gave a jerky nod and took her clothes back
into the bathroom. She shut the door and then leaned against it, letting out a
slow, deliberate breath. Holy cow, she was out of her league. He was somehow
both cute and hot, and those glasses . . .
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