One of my favorite Canadian romance authors, Jackie Lau, has seen a lot of holiday romances featuring white characters, but very few with biracial or Asian characters. She decided to correct that with a series of four novellas, one for each of the Wong siblings. The Wongs grew up in the small Ontario town of Mosquito Bay. The first novella centers around Canadian Thanksgiving, which is this weekend. This is a sweet, fluffy novella with low conflict, some steamy sex, baking, and a playboy who uncovers his inner cinnamon roll.
The Wong sibling’s mother and grandmother have decided to interfere in their love lives by arranging a blind date for each of them at the family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Ah Ma (paternal grandmother) has arranged the blind dates according to romance tropes. They set Nick up with his opposite. He is an advertising executive in Toronto, she run the family pig farm in a small town. The woman he is interested in is his brother’s date, Lily Tseng, with whom he had a one night stand the weekend before.
Nick, the playboy, is all in on a relationship with Lily. Lily isn’t at all sure that it’s a good idea. Nick seduces her by taking up baking, meeting her family, and showing her that he is getting to know who she is.
Most romances have that big conflict/obstacle near the end that the couple must overcome in order to have a happily ever after. In this novella, the main obstacle (parting with the understanding that they wouldn’t see each other again) is overcome early in the story. The meat of this story is Lily realizing that she doesn’t have to change in order to be interesting, and Nick realizing that he doesn’t have to reject everything about his parent’s life in order to be his own person.
It’s a lovely story that left me looking forward to spending more time with the Wong family. I received this arc from the author in exchange for an honest review.