Title: Playground Games
Collection: Winter Wonderland Story Giveaway
Author: Lily Morton
Length: 96 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: If you’re ready for one big happy “awwwww” to begin the New Year, Lily Morton’s free Winter Wonderland story, Playground Games, is a great place to start.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: School trips are hell on the teachers.
Auguste Patterson’s happy place on a winter holiday would involve a seat by a fire, a good book, and alcohol. Which is why he’s horrified when the headmaster at the primary school where he teaches demands he accompany a group of young students to France on a skiing trip. Gus believes snow should always be viewed from inside a warm building and never encountered while flailing on skis.
The holiday’s single perk is also the one reason Gus has for liking sports—the school’s PE teacher, Doug Henshaw. Doug is Gus’s secret crush, and sharing a room at the ski chalet with him almost makes managing forty school children bearable. But Gus doesn’t stand a chance with Doug. A handsome, funny ex-professional football player would never fall for a hopelessly unathletic language teacher. Would he?
Review: Doug Henshaw was introduced in Lily Morton’s Charlie Sunshine as the guy Misha Lebedinsky thought would make an ideal boyfriend for his best friend, Charlie Burroughs. Hahaha. No. If you’ve read the book, you know how that played out, though it was through no fault of Doug’s. He’s the charming, handsome, and all-around lovely ex-footballer-cum-PE teacher; he just wasn’t for Charlie. That Doug now has his own story must be a testament to how many readers wanted to see him get his happily ever after, and, naturally, he does so in Lily Morton’s inimitable style.
Morton begins a book like no other author I’ve read, and Playground Games follows suit. The situations her characters find themselves in as they’re introduced is the stuff of romantic comedy, and Gus Patterson couldn’t have been sprung on readers in a more, shall we just say . . . delicate . . . way. It’s in that moment we understand Doug and Gus are meant for each other, though, and that the journey for us readers will be to watch them discover it for themselves. And let me assure you, watching it happen is so, so sweet.
Everyone (including Charlie, who makes a cameo appearance) can see that Doug and Gus are smitten with each other. The challenge, then, is for them to cotton on to the fact that they are exactly what the other needs. Through what might be one of the most potentially unromantic scenarios—a skiing trip with a group of elementary school children—Lily Morton manages to pull out all the romantic stops along with some truly comical moments along the way, offering up the sarcasm and clever quips her fans have come to expect, to bring Doug and Gus to their inevitable beginning. And the courting? Let me just say there’s one scene in particular that stands out as one of the most romantic scenes I think this author has ever written.
If you’re ready for one big happy “awwwww” to begin the New Year, Lily Morton’s free Winter Wonderland story, Playground Games, is a great place to start.
You can buy Playground Games here:
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