3.25 Stars
Kellan McQuire, 27, plans to spend his
New Year’s Eve alone at his cabin with some beer. Do-gooder Maggie Kelly, 22,
plans to spend it with a lonely old lady eating baked bread. But when a snowy
road derails her car, they end up spending it together.
This was an okay read. Nothing
spectacular, but nothing overly problematic either. Mostly, I struggled a bit
to get a gauge on the characters. It
felt like the writers didn’t have a consistent handle on them either. Kellan mentions
just a few too many times how he’s at the cabin to escape fame, yet he hasn’t
quite achieved it yet. He has aspirations
to be a successful musician, but he’s already grown tired of the business. He was a bit of a paradox.
Maggie too. One minute she was raised not
to say swear words, the next she’s letting them flow freely. She has a
reputation as a virgin, but she had a boyfriend for four years who she was
sleeping with. She seemed a bit flighty
too.
“She was all cheerful like a Strawberry Shortcake doll on acid.”
Told via their alternating first person
POV, they weren’t unlikable, but they weren’t easy to connect with either. While Maggie was at least consistent, Kellan’s
harsher voice in the early chapters didn’t feel like the same character as the softer later
ones, though I preferred the later.
I couldn’t help feel that the conflict
was a little contrived. Maggie knows and agrees to their relationship being
nothing more than a fling, a no strings attached arrangement, so the fact that
Kellan withheld the details of his career didn’t seem like it was the betrayal
it was made out to be.
“But she seemed ready to fillet my ass and serve it as a garnish for her steak dinner.”
And personally I thought Maggie’s friend
overstepped her bounds. Her arrival was knee-jerk drama at the least and
illogical at best. (Plane tickets aren’t cheap.)
The duo has a good amount of sexy encounters.
There’s no skimping on the love scenes, and the story is safe.
“When he yanked open a bedside drawer and withdrew a strip of condoms, then tore open the first, that was the best sound ever.”
The only turn-off was Kellan’s admission
(and more than one occasion reference) that he made out with Maggie’s older
sister in high school. Thankfully, they never slept together and there is no OW drama, but it was a bit
too close for comfort for me.
Don’t let the title mislead you, as noted
in the front matter this is more about the baby making than Kellan’s daddy
days, which I wish we could have seen more of. That cover is quite ovary
weeping.
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