It’s the signature Alexis Hall banter, wit, fun, and love. I adored it and was 100% here for it. It was slightly too long, with a slightly slow pace for parts of it, but I still enjoyed the story.

This is totally a Christmas book, but the cover fails to market it as such.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC.

This is the Alexis Hall that we all fell in love with during Boyfriend Material. You’ll love this one if you like: messy characters, slow burn, & family shenanigans. The whole almost ruined the HEA plot twist moment and follow up was also done so well. Just all around top notch writing.

I liked this one! I support Gollum in all his wrongs (he is baby). Johnathan’s character was so interesting, and I loved the scenes with his family, especially the exploration of his relationship with his father.

I could eat the banter in this book with a spoon, and the chicken-fisting scene literally made me lol. Hall is charming as always.

Oh! Also, this quote:“I’m frozen like an underpaid deer in overpriced headlights.”

I don’t know why that quote tickles my pickle so much, but *shrugs*.

This was such a fun take on an amnesia plot, where Sam pretends he has amnesia to prevent his jerk boss Jonathan from firing him and his coworkers, then ends up staying with him while he recovers from his concussion. I loved the interactions with Jonathan's family, and the Darcy-like reveal that Jonathan isn't as much of a jerk as he seems, but very very bad at caring for the people he loves. I also loved Sam's coworkers. The romance is an excellent slow burn. I did wish, for a book from Sam's POV, that we got a bit more of Sam's growth and backstory, as that was hinted at well but felt a bit rushed in the last quarter. But as always, Alexis Hall had me laughing out loud constantly.

Alexis Hall really, truly, can do no wrong when it comes to writing. My biggest complaints about this are that #1 while it is set in the world of Boyfriend Material, and has an extremely quick, unnamed reference to Luc (that reference is then referenced so I guess that makes 2 references?), it in fact has no Luc or Oliver and #2 the formatting on my digital ARC was absolute crap. Neither of those things made me like the book any less. It was legitimately laugh out loud funny. I will never not love a character who swears as much as I do. I will also never not love a grumpy/sunshine (or grumpy/slightly less grumpy but able to see a silver lining) romance. Jonathan is extra grumpy but there is at least a reason for it. When that grumpiness plays out next to his super hyper family it's even better. Also, his sweet moments are made even sweeter by virtue of his normal level grumpy. Sam is just...well funny. Sometimes (a lot of the time) he's stupid but it's still funny. The way he, and everyone else at the store, speak product names in their entirety EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. is brilliant and hilarious and makes me want to do the same thing only that doesn't really work because I work with books, and you already do that. As with any Alexis Hall book where one of the characters has an accent from some part of England other than London, I wasn't always 100% sure if the wording was weird due to regional dialect or if there were actual typos. But it wasn't enough of an issue to be a problem. The ending felt a bit rushed, but I'll forgive it since this is a series and I assume we will be getting more Sam and Jonathan in the future, which I am looking forward to.