Review: Waiting for Winter by L.B. Gregg

Author: L.B. Gregg

Publisher: Self-Published

Pages/Word Count: 47 Pages

Rating: A Small Gem

Blurb: Some mistakes are worth repeating.

Luke always thought he and Winter were the perfect couple—until the day Winter announced he was taking a new job and they were uprooting and headed for Germany. No discussion. No debate. For the first time in his life, Winter miscalculated. Badly. Now Luke is trying his best to move on with his life, but Winter is back in town and he’s set on digging their relationship out of the deep freeze.

Part of the Comfort and Joy Anthology.

Review: There is so much win in this story I don’t even know where to start, so I guess I’ll go with the one thing that always, without fail, draws me into L.B. Gregg’s books—her characters. There is so much Win in this story! And when I say that, I mean Winter Kendrick, and when I say Win, I mean Win, the man who broke poor Luke’s heart.

If you’ve ever read this author’s work before, you’ve probably noticed that one of the things she does consistently well is to give her books an irresistible opening, one that has you drawn in before you even have a chance to get the full measure of the characters or what their lives will consist of. In the case of Waiting for Winter, the beginning is the end. More specifically, the story opens after Winter and Luke’s crushing breakup is six months gone, with Lu still living in the home he’d dreamt of sharing with Win for the rest of their lives. Only Winter had other plans and before Luke knew it, he was alone and Winter was in Berlin, moving on with a life that didn’t include being rooted to one place for the rest of his life.

The chemistry between these two men is near tangible, when Win shows up out of the blue to face an angry, hurting and heartbroken Luke. That opening hook? Yep, it’s some hot (and for Luke, rather confusing) sex that doesn’t work out quite the way Winter had intended. This story is told in the first person from Luke’s point-of-view, and it works perfectly because he’s the unreliable narrator to a good extent. He’s the wronged one in this story, so Win comes off as a bit of a selfish bastard–which he sort of was–but getting only Luke’s take on things also adds an air of mystery to the man who’d done him wrong…until the big romantic climax of the story, which is holiday perfection. The May/December romance reflects the story’s Midsummer and Midwinter chapters, the relationship’s darkest and lightest hours happening in the Midnight and Daylight chapters, and I loved those parallels.

Waiting for Winter is a story with so much built-in tension that my heart was in one giant fist-like clench all the way through. Twice. Because I couldn’t read this little gem just once. Until an end that is only the beginning, which was the perfect full-circle close to a romance that just needed a little Christmas forgiveness and a second chance to work.

You can buy Waiting for Winter here: