Friday Reads | The Elf and Cranberry Creampuff

For this Friday I’ve picked The Elf and Cranberry Creampuff by C.L. Etta. This really isn’t my kind of story, but it’s that time of year.

As both the title and the cover suggest, this is a lighthearted holiday romance. Edmund is an elf who has been banished from the North Pole for making inappropriate toys. Every December for the last fifty years he’s been helping out at different malls. The rest of the year he’s been trapped in a glass globe. Then, when the banishment is over, and it’s time for him to go back to the Nort Pole he meets Dexter. Sparks fly and wood is created.

This novelette is filled with holiday cheer and love. Me being me, I’d rather gone without the love declarations, but I think you romantics out the would object to that. Sometimes there was a little POV-confusion on my part, but I had a few laughs, and it did live up to my expectations so I won’t complain.

I haven’t read anything by C.L. Etta before, but after having snooped around a little I saw that she has two other books out and one to come at the very beginning of 2017. If you like pink glitter and spunk tasting of Christmas cookies, be sure to check this one out!

books2read.com/CanberryCreampuff *


Book Cover of The Elf and Cranberry CreampuffEdmund is an esthetic over industrious elf banished from the North Pole. His punishment — 50 years spent serving the suburban mall Santas. During his final earthbound Christmas season he meets one of his living and breathing creations–Cranberry Creampuff, the doll that got him banished five decades earlier.


* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

Friday Reads | M/M Holiday Delights

This isn’t a real Friday Reads post, I haven’t read anything since yesterday, but… There is this blog called Books, Coffee & Captured Moments and for the third year in a row, I think at least, they post M/M Holiday Delights. Every day several holiday stories are presented, so what better way to get gear up for the season than to go over there and check it out?

Yesterday, Shiny Things by Amy Spector, The Invasion of Tork by Claire Davis and Al Stewart, and Once in a Snowstorm by moi had their turn, all on the same day.  There are more of Beaten Track’s authors there too, and many many others. Books from 92 different writers plus 21 anthologies will each have their turn from now and up to the end of the year.

I wrote a little about Shiny Things yesterday – you can read it here – and if you haven’t read The Invasion of Tork I dare say it’s time. Not only is it time, it is also free.

It’s time to start the holiday reads!


Book Cover The Invasion of TorkAdam is cool, intelligent and drop-dead gorgeous – all the guys tell him so! When he is forced to start voluntary work at the local homeless shelter, all he worries about is keeping the clients well away from him and finishing the placement as soon as possible. Until he meets Tork.

Tork is clever and funny. He makes origami models and reads Dickens. Tork has green hair and makes Adam’s heart race with longing. But Tork is homeless and not at all impressed with Adam’s attitude.

Can Adam see past his fear and arrogance? Can Tork give Adam a chance?
Can two such different men turn the world upside down and find out what really matters? Read to find out their story.

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A story from Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology


* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

Shiny Things – A Thanksgiving Read

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays I watch in movies and think ‘well, that looks nice’ and then I move on with my life without sparing it much more thought.

This year, I thought I’d read a story for Thanksgiving – we do it for Halloween and Christmas so why not Thanksgiving? Well, maybe because people are too busy eating turkey or for the fact that Thanksgiving stories are pretty hard to come by. I spent quite some time looking for a Thanksgiving book I wanted to read and I’m sad to say nothing really caught my interest, but then I remembered Shiny Things by Amy Spector.

If you think Amy Spector is all horror and blood and gore you’re wrong. Shiny Things is a gentle new adult romance.  I loved it when I read it in 2014. Back then I didn’t know Amy and everything with writing was new and shiny and rather scary.

This story made me cry then and I thought maybe it wouldn’t now, but I got quite emotional while reading it this morning.

Shiny Things is about Nathaniel who’s father kicked him out when he found out he was gay and Vincent, the boy who got him kicked out. It’s Thanksgiving ten years later and these boys, now young men, meet again. Vincent is the owner of a gallery and Nathaniel is there to renovate said gallery.

There is one scene when Nathaniel is watching the paintings in the gallery and sits down to talk to the artist that had me sobbing – both in 2014 and now – it’s just a few lines but it’s enough.

If you haven’t read it, you should! Shiny Things is part of the Boughs of Evergreen anthology and the proceed from that anthology goes to the Trevor Project.

books2read.com/ShinyThings *


Book Cover Shiny Things by Amy SpectorA story from Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology

At sixteen, Nathaniel Avery was shipped off to live with an aunt in hopes of quelling a budding relationship between him and another boy. Ten years later, a frantic call from his younger brother and his father’s failing health, brings him back home.

Just weeks before Thanksgiving and the most important day in Vincent Cooke’s career, he nearly collides with the grown version of the boy he never really forgot.

Will a gallery renovation, the holiday season and the art of a mad genius help them to rebuild a friendship and rekindle a romance?


* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.