City Owl Press
November 22, 2016
Lauren Hall is in the middle of a charity function to support the local animal shelter when the guy who’s supposed to jump out of the cake and do a striptease for the local knitting society is late.
When a guy, a very cute ginger sporting a close beard, enters and knows her name, she presumes that he is the cake guy. It’s actually Gabe Nicholson, her brother’s best friend, who is doing a favor for her brother, Cooper, by responding to her call for help. She gives him stripper pants and eggnog-flavored body oil. And then begins the first dare of the season . . .
I loved this book! It is fun! It is sexy! It it is ridiculously sweet and big-hearted! I loved Gabe and Lauren!
After several days of trying to get into another book and finding my attention elsewhere, last night I thought I had better find something else and chose this one because it sounded like fun. It was. It also cured me of thinking that my attention couldn’t be held by a book at the moment because I just didn’t want to put this one down even when the clock told me I had better.
Everything just works so well about it. Sometimes an author will launch into a sex scene and it will seem so rote that it’s boring, but the ones in The 12 dares of Christmas were steamy and really unforced and oo la la! This book is, amongst many other things, sexy so if you are put off by the hot and steamy, you might want to give this a pass.
The chemistry between Lauren and Gabe was immediate. She is worried that her over-protective brother will find out that she’s seeing his best friend while Gabe continually says he’s not afraid of Cooper. They are so into each other that they sometimes don’t think of the repercussions.
Lauren’s Aunt Jo, best friend, Abby, and boss, Isabelle, add a lot of humor and fun to the mix and there were lots of cutes with puppies and kittens and Gabe’s interactions.
While the book takes place over just a matter of days, Lauren and Gabe seem natural. There are no unrealistic droppings of the “l” word and the ending with that in mind is more than extremely satisfactory.
The 12 dares of Christmas was definitely a novel that was over before I knew it, and I didn’t want it to end.
This may be the best Christmas read of the season for me; if not, it’s really close.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
From Amazon: The 12 dares of Christmas
rating: 
(5 out of 5 butterflies)