Written by Camilla Isley⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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My thanks to author Camilla Isley, and Rachel of Rachel's Random Resources for the invitation to join this blog tour and a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The blurb:
No one wants to be single at the holidays.
Even Little Miss Grinch, Nikki, a successful and independent woman, must face her bachelorette status at the most horrible time of the year.
December is her personal version of holly-jolly hell: a merry torture made of couples kissing at every corner, forced vacation days, and an inescapable family reunion.
And when her baby sister announces she’s engaged—to Paul, the man Nikki is secretly in love with—and that he’s spending the holidays with them, Christmas starts looking bluer than ever.
Nikki can’t possibly survive an entire week trapped home as the family’s spinster. But she has no time to meet men or to try the newest dating app, she’s too busy working as a video producer for an advertising agency.
So what’s a girl to do?
Nikki has the perfect solution: to hire a fake boyfriend.
Luckily, her job gives her access to an endless catalog of gorgeous actors to choose from.
But Nikki will soon discover that keeping business and pleasure from mixing isn’t so easy, and that she might not be immune to a little mistletoe magic. Especially not when she picked out the perfect man as her Christmas date...
A fun, festive romantic comedy with lots of bad behavior and Christmas spirit. Like a creamy hot chocolate with marshmallows, you won’t want to put this deliciously hilarious novel down. Perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella, Sally Thorne, and Jo Watson.
First Comes Love is a series of interconnected romantic novels. However, each book in the series can be read as a standalone.
Women's Fiction
Romance
My thoughts:
Written in the first person from the perspective of Nikki Moore, a thirty-year-old, successful producer in an advertising company who has been single for a while, and feels she is a disappointment to her family because she has not yet snagged a man. Her younger sister, Julia, has just become engaged, further underlining Nikki's deficiency in the boyfriend-department.Going home at any time, but especially for the Christmas holiday, has always been a trial for Nikki as she feels that Julia is the golden girl who inherited all the beautiful genes, and that their parents always side with Julia, while Nikki is the plain one, who without a man, is a bit of a disappointment to them. And now Julia has got her man, Paul, to commit - a man Nikki had known for years and had feelings for, before the fateful day she introduced him to Julia, when Julia realising that Nikki had feelings for Paul, snatched him from under her nose.
What do you do in a situation like this, when your younger sister is now engaged and you are still single? You hire a boyfriend to take home for the holiday of course! Having discovered the attributes of Julia's perfect man, Nikki searches the database at work for a model to match and comes up with Diego O'Donnell. She hires him to act as her boyfriend for holidays, probably in hopes of making her sister jealous and certainly to steal her thunder as now everyone will be focusing on Nikki's new boyfriend. What Nikki does not bargain for is falling in love with Diego.
Nikki is a likeable character from the start. I feel her frustration that she is not able to shine at home like her sister does, and this frustration can bring out the crazy side of her personality. I didn't take at all to Julia, who comes over as spoilt and selfish throughout, and would be someone I could not trust, and would keep at arms length... or much further! I loved that when Julia cooks a vegan meal, the food is eaten without comment, but an hour later the whole family end up in Nikki's bedroom devouring pizza which her best friend, Blair, has smuggled into the house. For me this sounds like the first time Nikki has 'triumphed' over Julia and underlines that Julia is the golden child whose failures are not to be mentioned. She is allowed to believe that everyone enjoyed the meal, so it comes as a bigger slap in the face when she finds the whole family feasting on pizza. I'd be pretty smug too, telling her without words, that her diet doesn't suit everyone!
This is a funny, easy to read, happy-ending, Christmas story which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I loved Nikki's sarcastic thoughts which definitely mirror my own, and add extra colour to the story. It is book 3 in the First Comes Love series, but can be read as a standalone.
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| Author Bio – Camilla Isley |
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Camilla is an engineer turned writer after she quit her job to follow her husband on an adventure abroad. She’s a cat lover, coffee addict, and shoe hoarder. Besides writing, she loves reading—duh!—cooking, watching bad TV, and going to the movies—popcorn, please. She’s a bit of a foodie, nothing too serious. A keen traveler, Camilla knows mosquitoes play a role in the ecosystem, and she doesn’t want to starve all those frog princes out there, but she could really live without them. |
| Social Media Links – | |
| https://www.instagram.com/camillaisley/ | |
| Goodreads | https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14135080.Camilla_Isley |
| Facebook Author Page | https://www.facebook.com/camillaisley/ |
| X | https://twitter.com/camillaisley |
| Bookbub | Camilla Isley |
| https://www.pinterest.com/camillaisley/ | |
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