Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Dan’s favourite festive sweater is so ugly, it’s cost him not one but three boyfriends and sent him back to his parents’ place for the third Christmas in a row. About to give up hope of ever having a Christmas date, Dan meets Jake, a hot guy with a rock and roll edge. Jake is infatuated with Dan’s sweater but vanishes before Dan can decide if Jake is for real or really in need of an eye-check. After all, no one has ever liked the sweater.

Dan’s sweater is rocketed to national attention, when Jake’s radio colleagues launch a hunt for the mystery man in the hideous jumper. Dan jumps at the chance to meet Jake again, and they hit it off in a big way, to the accompaniment of intimate gigs, exclusive clubs, and the paparazzi. Dan falls hard, but despite obvious mutual attraction, Jake refuses to take him back to his apartment. Is the relationship real – or a ratings stunt? After all, Jake has a reputation for cool that Dan, a lowly gym instructor, could never approach. Is a fondness for tacky Christmas clothing the only thing they have in common? Or does uber-cool Jake hide a Christmas secret of his own?

Book Review

Christmas sweaters are a tradition in a few countries (they’re called Christmas jumpers in the UK), but the “ugly Christmas sweater” is, apparently, a relatively recent tradition. Brought to life by a couple of Hollywood celebrities in the 1980s and revived around 2001 to gain new heights by 2011 and onward, they can be defined as “a wooly pullover with questionable color mixing and patterns” – the gaudier the better. In this story set in London, Dan is a total ugly Christmas sweater fan, and he has mastered the art of wearing one to the point that his three most recent breakups happened around Christmas, when he was wearing his ugliest sweater of all.

When Dan meets Jake in a coffee shop of international fame and the stranger is the first guy to actually admire the atrociously ugly Christmas sweater Dan wears like a badge of honor, Dan thinks he is dreaming. After a heated exchange in the bathroom, Jake vanishes and Dan is left to wonder if he has imagined it all. But then his work colleagues at the fitness studio where Dan teaches Pilates inform him that Jake has been looking for him – via the radio – and Dan is launched into an incredibly romantic adventure with the ugly-sweater-admirer of his dreams.
 
Jake is a radio DJ of some fame and has an “ugly” secret of his own. On top of that he has a tough time trusting anyone – many people have only pretended to like him while all they wanted was for him to launch their music careers. So while it is evident that he likes Dan, and they get on amazingly well, Jake holds back to the point that Dan wonders what the problem is. The resolution is unexpected, but totally in character for these two guys. I loved it!

If you like Christmas stories with lots of humor, if ugly Christmas sweaters are your thing, and if you’re looking for a read that is funny, even a little over the top in a good way, then you will probably enjoy this outrageously funny, yet very romantic and very hot novella.

 

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by NineStar Press for the purpose of a review.

Additional Information

Format	ebook
Length	Novella, 59 pages/16300 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	14-December-2015
Price	$1.74 ebook
Buy Link	http://ninestarpress.com/product/the-ugliest-sweater/