Cruel Winter With You - Review

Cruel Winter With You (Under the Mistletoe Collection, # 1)

By: Ali Hazelwood

Publication: November 12, 2024 by Amazon Original Stories

73 pages

Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Holiday, Christmas

( Goodreads | Amazon )

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Goodreads description--For two former childhood friends, a blustery winter storm stirs some frosty—and scorching—memories in a delightful short story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood.

All newly minted pediatrician Jamie Malek wants is to borrow a roasting pan for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, that requires her to interact with Marc—her best friend’s troublemaking brother, who’s now a tech billionaire. He’s the one who got away. She’s the one who broke his heart. Outside, a howling blizzard. Inside, a crackling fire. Suddenly, being snowbound with the man she never expected to see again might not be such a bad way to spend a winter’s night.

Ali Hazelwood’s Cruel Winter with You is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

I got the Under the Mistletoe short story collection from Amazon Prime. I love that I can both read these books and listen to the audio exactly where I left off reading. Love this technology. I was able to read a little, and then listen in the car going to pick my kid up from school. Now, I will say that this is only the second of this series that I've read. And I haven't read them in order. I read book 4, Merriment and Mayhem first and was disappointed in it. My biggest issue is that with a short story, the characters don't feel like they have adequate time to get to know each other before jumping to the spicy scenes that actually feel like the point of these books--based upon these two. 

That being said, Cruel Winter With You felt different. Because the characters have a history with each other, the chemistry between them felt realistic even though the page count was so low. And I say "so low" 72 pages is a good bit better than 50 like the other one of these I read. I can't help but continue to compare them since they are a collection.

Jamie shows up next door to her best friend's parent's house hoping to ask to borrow a roasting pan. However, the weather is ridiculous, and the only one home is Marc. Marc is Jamie's best friend's brother and her ex. These two have so much history, baggage, and tension. I really appreciated how much Ali Hazelwood accomplished in relationship building in such a short amount of pages. I was hooked. And I would have loved a full-length book for these two characters.

I don't read for the spicy stuff so be warned if that's an issue for you. Thankfully, it didn't take up 30% of the book as it did with Merriment and Mayhem.

Cruel Winter with You gets 4 Stars. I really appreciated the amount of development in the characters in such a short space of pages especially considering they were stuck in a house and the events happened basically in 24 hours (minus flashbacks). Have you read Cruel Winter with You? What did you think? Let me know!

PS. I haven't read any of the others in this series, but I'm not sure they're worth it. I think this might have been the best one of the entire collection, and I might decide to end on a high note. Have any of you read the others? Are they worth a read/listen?