Hello everyone! Merry Christmas! Hope your holidays are filled with warmth and love.
My gift to you is a review of Cold Feet by Jay Northcote. In exchange for this review, I received a free copy of the book.
Blurb:
Getting snowed in at a remote cottage in Wales with someone he’d fancied for ages isn’t exactly how Sam expected to spend Christmas. His feelings for Ryan are pointless. Ryan’s straight—or so he thought.
Until now, Ryan’s kept his feelings for Sam buried. Why ruin a friendship over what might only be gay experimentation? Playing it cool seems safer, until a cold snap makes sharing body heat vital. In their Welsh safe haven, anything seems possible.
As Ryan’s reserve melts away, Sam wants more than stolen kisses under the mistletoe. But a sudden thaw means making decisions. They could face the New Year together—unless one of them gets cold feet.
Buy Links:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QFN1NY8
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-coldfeet-1689541-149.html
You can find an excerpt of the story in my previous post: https://shaylamist.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/what-mm-books-to-buy-this-xmas-day-5/
My rating: 5 stars
I fell this story because it had all the themes I love (and most other readers love) – best friends to lovers, snowed in in isolated location were the heating doesn’t work (eeep!), college boys and closeted MC. Wow! With themes like these it was impossible not to enjoy the read.
Now some of you might think this is too cliché. I know some people really hate clichés. But think about it: why do clichés exist in the first place? Because clichés are proofed to work. Because people love them just as much as they hate them sometimes! If a writer takes a cliché and renders it in such a way that it makes it unique, then the readers will fall hard for the story. Such example is Cold Feet. Despite the cliché situation the characters were in, the author excelled in characterization, thus giving the story its unique voice. I loved how the story was paced, I loved that there was no hurry and, at the same time, it was filled with sexual tension. I loved how threedimmensional the characters were and I’d truly want to read more about them in the future. The story had an amazing ending that will make your heart stutter.
In other words, there’s nothing cliché about Cold Feet.
I also noticed some readers didn’t like the “miscommunication issue” (yes, I do tend to read other people’s reviews too). Not sure what was wrong about that. I think it added just the right amount of angst to move the story forward, and, believe it or not, miscommunication exists in real life as well. I blowed most of my relationships thanks to that. Read any study on relationships and they’ll tell you communication is the key. Per a contratrio, this mean people don’t communicate enough. So what exactly is the problem that the author used miscomunication as the internal conflict factor? I think people who latch on that to give bad reviews are being entirely too subjective.
So before buying any book, do read excerpts, go to the author’s blog, read about the process of writing that particular book, read about their research, their struggles. I cannot stress enough how important it is. You will have build your own opinion without being influenced completely by reviewers, who, at the end of the day, are people just like you, which makes them subjective and not truly reliable.
That being said, for what it’s worth, I really enjoyed this book and I think it was the perfect cozy holiday read.
If you wanna take my advice, check out the excerpt I mentioned above, as well as Jay Northcote’s website: www.jaynorthcote.com
Cheers guys! Happy holidays!
Shayla Mist 