Mason is a lovable himbo trapped in an engagement of convenience. His fiancé promptly dumps him when the press finds out that Mason has absconded to Fiji with the sketchy lead singer of a popular rock band. Mason and his fiancé are disgraced, and the whole thing is a shitshow of epic proportions.
It turns out that sketchy rock star (Jackson) only seduced Mason in the hopes of getting some easy publicity. As soon as the scandal breaks, Jackson dumps Mason for his scuba instructor. Mason pawns his engagement ring to get back to New York as his parents freeze his accounts as soon as the embarrassing situation comes to light. It turns out that Mason’s parents arranged the engagement between Mason and Hollis for their own personal branding, threatening to cut Mason off if he did not go along with it.
Now Arif is left to deal with the fallout of Mason’s bad decision making. Arif, best friend of Mason’s ex-fiancé Hollis, is staying at Hollis’s condo while Hollis is out of the country doing some super secret CIA stuff. When a bedraggled Mason shows up unannounced, Arif takes pity on the poor man and lets him stay in the guest room until Mason can find someplace else to crash.
Living together leads to friendship, leads to drama, and to mutual attraction. Arif (a hostage negotiator by trade) forces himself to not let his growing feelings for Mason override his common sense. Mason feels horrible for what he did to Hollis, and just wants to learn to take care of himself after being a trust fund kid his entire life.
This is a very cute book. Mason really grew on me. However, the story made very little sense. Actually, it did make sense if you just roll with it, which, in my experience, is the only way to enjoy these types of fluffy romances in the first place.
The weirdest thing about this, and there are many strange things, is that Arif is royalty of some small and extremely wealthy island kingdom. After being betrothed at age ten, he abdicated the throne and moved to the US to attend Yale. Sure, whatever. His backstory really makes no sense whatsoever. He is the grumpy to Mason’s sunshine.
This book wasn’t especially bad, but it wasn’t good either. It is the first book in a trilogy focusing on each member of Arif and Hollis’s super secret government undercover bullshit jobs.
Oh, and all of this takes place at Christmas so…..Christmas story? The title has nothing to do with the book, except at one point they get a Christmas tree so I guess that tracks.
Anyway, if you can get it for free, it is cute and nonsensical. There is smut, which is hot, but also sort of generic. I’m not too picky about my smut so 3 stars for smut, 1 for story and character development, brings this book to a firm two star rating.
I got this as part of Romance Bookworms’ Stuff your Kindle Day in September.