Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Keeping secrets from your best friend isn’t right, but it’s easier than admitting you’ve fallen in love with him.

Sharing a late-night kiss with his best friend, Alex, is Riley’s dream come true. Waking up to discover Alex was too drunk to remember anything is more like a nightmare. Scared the truth could destroy their friendship, Riley keeps quiet and pretends nothing happened.

Alex can’t shake the feeling that he said or did something stupid on their group’s drunken weekend away—why else would Riley be avoiding him? Although the explanation he finally gets sounds plausible, Riley’s still acting strange, and trying to figure out why that is unearths emotions Alex has worked hard to bury.

Riley knows not telling Alex how he feels is probably selfish, but he wants one last normal Christmas before he has to come clean and face the potential fallout.

He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

I’m always up for a  holiday story and one about friends and love?  Absolutely on board twice over!  Annabelle Jacobs story, A Christmas Kiss,  starts with a drunken night and a shared bed.   For one man its everything he ever hoped for, for the other?  A blurry haze of memories he can’t quite get a hold of.  And for the reader?  A sometimes frustrating batch of lovely men, missed connections, and “why don’t you talk to him!”.  Truly, I spent half the book wanting to wap a miserable Riley into talking into a clearly miserable friend who missed him.

Jacobs does lay the groundwork for Riley’s actions and yet, to a degree, he still ends up frustrating not only his friends but this reader with his inaction.

Alex, a little more of an unknown quantity than Riley, is still a wonderful man and I found myself warming up to  him quickly.  Once the talking commences, and the frustration falls away, that holiday spirit of wonder and love drifts into place and A Christmas Kiss fulfills its promise.  Want another friends to lovers sweet, holiday romance?  A Christmas Kiss by Annabelle Jacobs just might be the story for you.

Cover art is ok, I would have hoped for something more relevant to the story than  just your male torso.

Sales Links

Amazon Universal link
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 145 pages
Published November 18th 2016 by Annabelle Jacobs
ASINB01N9259SC
Edition LanguageEnglish