Same Time Next Year

No, no, no! Why?!  This is not my first Tessa Bailey book, so I was very excited to read it. And I figured, it's a novella, so it will be light, quick, and breezy.  Instead, it was clunky, rushed, and cringy!  Seeing a glimpse of Britta and Sumner every few months throughout the year was not enough to make me get on board with their relationship. He was already in love with her before the book started, and she was extremely anti-relation from a traumatized childhood. I can't see how that can completely change in a couple of spread-out scenes.  And I was okay with the cringy dialogue until he demanded she love him. No, no, no! Love doesn't come on demand like that. At that point, I just had an icky feeling for him, and we were only at around 60% of the book. If it weren't a novella, it would have been a DNF.  Also, if your visa in the US expires tomorrow, you don't go looking for a wife tonight! And what about applying for a marriage license? And who gets a Green Card in 6 months?! My suspension of belief isn't that good, sorry.  I also think reading this book at the heels of The Wall of Winnipeg and Me, which does the whole marriage-for-a-green-card trope way better, amplified my distaste for it. 

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Very cute. Marriage of convenience with easy to like characters. It's a novella that's spread out over a year so time jumps a lot, but I felt like we still got complete character arcs.

I'm a sucker for a sports romance so I wish this had been full length but the important bits are there. (Unless you're reading specifically for brother's best teammate tropes, in which case you might be disappointed)

Starts on New Year's Even but doesn't feel particularly holiday-y so I wouldn't worry about waiting until the end of December to read it.