Maybe This Christmas is Tyler O'Neil's story. He's a former competitive skier, now at home helping run the family resort in Vermont following an injury that ended his career. He also now has custody of his teenage daughter, Jess, being that her mother has started a new family.
This is also Brenna's story. Brenna has been close to the O'Neil family her whole life. Now she works at the resort, working closely with Tyler as one of the ski instructors. And she's been in love with Tyler her whole life. After confessing this to her friends, they attempt to help her out, by forcing her out of her cabin at the resort (they're completely booked, they need the room) and into Tyler's house. Her friends feel hopeful that if the two could just find themselves in the right situation, the inevitable will happen, and for the most part they're right. Also helps that Tyler's daughter is trying to play matchmaker.
I enjoyed the way the relationship developed between the two characters. While Brenna always knew she loved Tyler, Tyler never wanted to damage his relationship with her and forced himself to view her only as a friend. But all along, he knew he thought of her as more than that, he was protective of her and he never got involved with women in a way that was meant to last, so of course he would never put Brenna in that position. Now though, with all these added responsibilities of caring for his daughter and working for his family, he's realizing it's time to grow up.
This book, as well as the others in this trilogy, makes me wish I could spend my holidays on a resort in Vermont in a log cabin with a big family - and I hate snow and big families, that's how well these stories are told. I love all the characters and the setting and romance is so great. Plenty of emotion and heart ache and happiness, as well as being very sexy.
Last year, one of my favorite holiday reads was Sarah Morgan's Sleigh Bells in the Snow. That's the first in the O'Neil Brothers trilogy, and I was glad to see plenty of that couple mentioned in this book. Because I liked that book so much, I was tempted to go ahead and read Maybe This Christmas last year also, but it's the third book in the trilogy and I felt I should read the second book in the series first - which was called Suddenly Last Summer. Didn't seem like something I wanted to read in December or January. So I read it this summer, and Maybe This Christmas was my first holiday read of the season. (If you find yourself in a similar situation, it isn't necessary to read the second book before reading the third. The couple from that book are barely mentioned in the third book. If you want some really great holiday romances, go ahead and get yourself Sleigh Bells in the Snow and Maybe This Christmas - you will be glad you did.)
I received a copy of this via NetGalley.
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