Title: Tinsel Fixes Everything
Author: Alex Jane
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 81 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Holiday Romance
At a Glance: A host of loving family and supportive friends bulk up the cast in this novella and give Tinsel Fixes Everything a warm and homey feel I expect to find in a Holiday Romance.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: They say you never get over your first love.
After a meteoric rise to baseball stardom, Chase Meadow’s dream is cut short and he’s back home for good, helping his brothers run the family bar while he finds his feet. Plenty of things have changed since he left for college. Although one thing he recognizes right away is Joel Levine.
From setting eyes on the skinny, stammering teen their first day of high school, until reluctantly parting five years later, the two of them had been inseparable. And now, Joel is definitely someone not easily forgotten.
But as Chase settles back into home town life, he finds that under the superficial differences—the leather jacket and tattoos—Joel is still the same person he fell for when they were fifteen. While they’re both older and wiser, Chase never stopped loving Joel. And as Christmas rolls closer, Chase starts to think that maybe Joel never stopped loving him either.
They say you never get over your first love.
Some people don’t have to.
Review: Chase Meadow’s six-year absence from his hometown is owed to his successful career as a pro baseball player. A career that has now come to an abrupt halt after an injury. It was the prospect of going pro out of college that precipitated the end of his relationship with Joel Levine. Not that Chase wanted things to end, but Joel left because he believed Chase needed him to and from that moment on, neither has moved on nor fully recovered from the pain of their breakup. But Chase is back now, and Joel is still beautiful and right there for the having…maybe. In spite of all the prevailing awkwardness between them, Chase begins to allow himself to hope they can at least salvage a friendship from the wreckage of their past.
Tinsel Fixes Everything is the second novella I’ve read by author Alex Jane, which also marks the second time I’ve been pleasantly satisfied by her ability to tell a full-bodied and heartfelt story with such an economy of words. In its simplest terms, this is the story of two men getting a second chance at first love, and it succeeds on a number of levels, one of which is that I fell for Chase and Joel from the moment they appeared on the page but also because Jane doesn’t attempt to build a relationship from scratch in these eighty-one pages.
Chase and Joel have a history together, one entangled in love and loss and hurt feelings, which leads to another thing that worked for me: in spite of its title, Alex Jane doesn’t try to fix everything that is broken between Chase and Joel before the end; there’s no gratuitous happily ever after or a band-aid slapped over past hurts for the sake of appeasement. Chase and Joel are still what I would consider a work in progress at the end, but it’s the promise of them finding their way together that makes this story so satisfying and sweet.
A host of loving family and supportive friends bulk up the cast in this novella and give Tinsel Fixes Everything a warm and homey feel I expect to find in a Holiday Romance. This novella was the ideal choice when I wanted and needed a quick shot of feel-good.
You can buy Tinsel Fixes Everything here:
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