I was so prepared to fall absolutely in love with this holiday romance. Small town scene, likeable leads, an absolutely darling matchmaking cat, and a series of cute romantic scenes structured around the 12 Days of Christmas — it has a lot of elements I love! The opening scene even featured a starring role for Snowball the cat, and a daring rescue attempt by the hero, Daniel, which goes hilariously wrong in front of the heroine, Sophie. From that first scene, I was hooked, and ready to lose myself in this romance.

Unfortunately, the story somewhat fizzled for me afterwards, and didn’t quite manage to hook me until about the halfway point. I can’t quite pinpoint why, and am open to the possibility that it’s simply a case of wrong timing for me, but it took me over a month to finish this, which for an animal-themed holiday romance is surprising.

I do like the leads, and I do buy the conflict between them — Sophie’s the new manager of the Weber Haus Inn, and Daniel owns the construction company doing renovations before Christmas. Both are take-charge Type A personalities who care deeply about their jobs but suck at collaborating. So when they have to work together — or at least around each other — to get the inn ready for the Christmas Market, they naturally butt heads.

I also like that Sophie’s backstory totally explains why she’s so prickly: her ex-boyfriend / former co-worker used her ideas to take her dream promotion for himself, so she naturally bristles when Daniel inadvertently circumvents her authority as manager. Daniel’s background is a little less clear-cut — he’s guilty over being unable to save his brother from dying when they were kids, so he now wants to solve all the problems he can. Perhaps I missed why he feels so responsible for his brother’s death? Either way, it’s a sad backstory, but the connection to his behaviour wasn’t quite as clear. I do also like the communication between the leads. They tell each other clearly what their professional boundaries are, and when the other has stepped over the line. And I love how the first scene with rescuing Snowball after the cat gets stuck chasing a partridge up a pear tree turns into an inside joke between Sophie and Daniel. Their banter about completing the 12 days of Christmas could have easily tipped over into too-cutesy territory, but the author makes it work. The scene with the five gold rings was super sweet, and by the time we got to five gold rings, I was eager to find out how the rest of the days were going to play out.

And of course, Snowball is an absolute darling from beginning to end. I absolutely love how she starts out loving Sophie and hating Daniel, and then reluctantly decides to play matchmaker to make them both happy. I also love how she struts around the inn like she owns the place, and how she apologizes with the cutest meows when one of her matchmaking schemes goes horribly awry.

Still, overall, I didn’t fall as much in love with this as I thought I would. There’s a minor plot thread about a business rival of Daniel’s that never really went anywhere — perhaps that rival turns out to be a major villain who’ll re-appear throughout the series before getting his just desserts? And there’s a minor plot thread involving a snobby mean girl who’s totally flirting it up with Daniel, which mostly just annoyed me. To be fair, I’m not a huge fan of stereotypical mean girl rivals in general — I prefer when the romantic rivals are also decent people, just not the right fit for the hero — and particularly when ‘mean girl’ is their only defining characteristic. Unlike even Sophie’s mean ex, Gisele barely even gets a backstory or motivation beyond just wanting to date Daniel.

Overall, this book was okay. I do think it’ll make a great Hallmark/Netflix holiday romance — the medium will move things along more quickly, the cute Christmassy encounters around the 12 Days of Christmas will play beautifully on screen, and of course, Snowball will be absolutely adorable on film.

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Thank you to Kensington Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a really sweet, feel-good story. Set some time before homosexuality was legalized in India, The Other Man tells the story of Ved Mehra, the wealthy, George Clooney-esque heir to his father’s Mumbai business empire. He goes on dates with women to appease his mom, but secretly meets up with men on Grindr. A messy breakup years ago has cautioned him from trying for anything more than no-strings-attached sex.

Enter Carlos Silva, an American on a business trip to India, who genuinely seems to want to use Grindr to make conversation. Their messages turn increasingly flirty, and even the people in Ved’s life notice how much happier he seems to be. The only problem is that around the same time he met Carlos, Ved had also finally agreed to an arranged marriage with Disha, and preparations are in full swing for their engagement party.

Despite the romantic elements, the story focuses a lot more on Ved’s personal growth, and his journey towards taking charge of his own happiness. While Ved and Carlos definitely engage in cute banter, the sparks are fairly mild, and I finished the book more happy about Ved finally making choices for himself rather than for his family, than about the romantic happily-ever-after.

Carlos was cute and charming, and I like how candid he was with Ved, but I do wish he’d been a bit more understanding of the complications Ved had to deal with. For example, Carlos gets angry that Ved rushes him out of his apartment one morning — Carlos accuses Ved of disrespecting him by not letting him hang around for a shower and breakfast — but the unfortunate reality is that Ved’s father also lives in the apartment, and Ved has many reasons to believe his father wouldn’t be supportive of his sexuality. A major snag for me is that Carlos felt a bit like a manic pixie dream boy — a perfect catch in many ways, yet with little sense of who he actually is / what he actually wants in life.

In contrast, I found Ved’s fiancee Disha a much more complex character. She has her annoying moments — to me, some of the stuff she does to ingratiate herself into Ved’s life and family verge on manipulation — but a lot of her annoyance at how Ved treats her is super understandable. Like him, she’s making the most of a bad situation — she isn’t in love with him either, and she’s still heartbroken over an ex-that-got-away years ago, yet she also feels the weight of family expectations to marry the ‘right’ kind of man. Unlike Ved, however, who often ignores her calls and texts to be with Carlos, she dives right into fulfilling her obligation by planning their engagement party, and in that regard, I found myself sympathizing with her a lot.

That being said, Ved is also very much a sympathetic character. While he does do some things that kinda suck, he’s also very clearly trying his best at balancing what makes him happy with what will make his family happy. True to the story’s overall light tone, the major conflicts get resolved fairly neatly, and everyone gets a version of a happy ending. Part of me wishes there was a bit more of realism in how the various resolutions were handled, but I’m reading this shortly before Christmas, and part of me appreciates how chill and optimistic the story turned out to be.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen Ltd for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pitched as a lighthearted desi take on She’s All That, Sway With Me was significantly more sobering than I expected. There’s a cute and sweet romance, but it’s more a coming-of-age / family story. Arsalan’s really sweet, and I like how he and Beenish helped each other with their respective family situations.

I think, because of all the rather dark themes explored in the story (parental abuse, spousal abuse, horrible abusive men with power, gendered discrimination, forced marriage, etc), my absolute favourite part of this book is Beenish’s friend Diamond. He’s hilarious, and a welcome bit of joy in every scene.

That being said, I think that the romance between Arsalan and Beenish really hit its stride late in the book, when Arsalan realizes Beans’ true motives for asking him to be her dance partner. His insight leads to a deep conversation about their relationships with their respective mothers, and it was a nice realization of how well they’d gotten to understand each other. They also have a lovely conversation about gravity and how opposites not just attract but balance each other out, which is sweet.

I like the other members of their families as well — Nana is a hoot, Aiza Aunty is a star, and Qirat is super relatable. But those stories were a tad more depressing than I expected from a rom com, and scenes featuring Arsalan’s father and Qirat’s fiance can be downright triggering.

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Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.