Title: Glass Tidings (2016 Holiday Charity Bundle)
Author: Amy Jo Cousins
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Release Date: December 5, 2016
Genre(s): Contemporary Romance
Page Count: 226
Reviewed by: Crabbypatty
Heat Level: 2.5 flames out of 5
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Blurb:
Eddie Rodrigues doesn’t stay in one place long enough to get attached. The only time he broke that rule, things went south fast. Now he’s on the road again, with barely enough cash in his pocket to hop a bus south after his (sort-of-stolen) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Midwest, USA.
He’s fine. He’ll manage. Until he watches that girl get hit by a car and left to die.
Local shop owner Grayson Croft isn’t in the habit of doing people any favors. But even a recluse can’t avoid everyone in a town as small as Clear Lake. And when the cop who played Juliet to your Romeo in the high school play asks you to put up her key witness for the night, you say yes.
Now Gray’s got a grouchy glass artist stomping around his big, empty house, and it turns out that he . . . maybe . . . kind of . . . likes the company.
But Eddie Rodrigues never sticks around.
Unless a Christmas shop owner who hates the season can show an orphan what it means to have family for the holidays.
Eddie Rodrigues likes to keep on the move, going around the country on the Ren faire circuit until the off-season when he winters in Texas with an old friend, Rhonda. Eddie is a glass artist churning out unicorns, fairies, mermaids a couple dozen at a time. “It’s not art. I’m like one of those line machines in a factory, doing the same things over and over again.” Eddie travels light and leaves fast … until he finds himself in Clear Lake, Iowa for an extended period of time after witnessing a hit and run accident.
Grayson Croft owns the Christmas Shoppe in Clear Lake which has been in his family for three generations. He’s stuck … stuck dwelling on a past relationship that evaporated before his very eyes when his boyfriend of several years left town suddenly, and stuck in his large lonely house surrounded by family heirlooms and memories. Then his old high school friend Christine, who’s now a cop in town, asks Gray to give her eyewitness Eddie a place to stay until they can discover the perpetrator of the hit and run.
What follows is a beautifully-written poignant story about two lonely men, one who has an M.O of leaving, and other who has been left behind.
He’d spent his entire life refusing to hang on to anything, because no one had ever hung on to him.
The story has no Huge Misunderstanding, angst-filled tirades or hackneyed “Christmas Miracle,” (and just a few sex scenes) but rather relates a steady slow process of discovery and acceptance and love. Neither man is perfect, but they are perfect for each other. I definitely recommend this book!
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