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A review by anabelsbrother
Cowboy SEAL Christmas by Nicole Helm
4.0
Okay so this isn't your typical light and fluffy Christmas read but I wouldn't have it any other way.
So. I didn't expect Gabe to be this broody but I also wasn't surprised. As the books progressed, I noticed Gabe getting surlier and surlier in the background, almost as if he retreated more and more into himself as his best friends got better mentally and found love. It was painful to read because Gabe started off this series as quite the fun guy, but at the start of his book he was someone else.
It was both fun and frustrating seeing Monica and Gabe interact with each other. Gabe obviously had issues with therapists, and he blatantly refused to get treatment because he said he didn't need any. He annoyed Monica a lot, shutting down her attempts of communication with sarcastic and sometimes rude remarks.
In the previous books we didn't get to see a lot of Monica beyond her therapist duties, but in this we got to be in her head and read her thoughts and fears, and that made her more real to me. Her fear regarding her son Colin was understandable and valid, but it also frustrated me so that she was too paranoid to let him go free. Gabe made her faced the fact that she couldn't keep her son in a bubble.
I shed many tears reading this book, mainly for Gabe because what he went through in his youth damaged him so badly to the point that he didn't trust love, and he already accepted that he would be alone in life. It took a lot of work for Monica and the other men to hammer into him that he was loved and that he was deserving of it. The groveling scene was a bit short, I feel but sweet nonetheless (and there was a llama involved so points for that). The epilogue just made me cry happy tears.
I wonder if Nicole wrote books on the Shaws and Lanes because the way the families were mentioned sounds like they had their own stories, so I have to check.
[Update: SHE HAD!!! It's the Big Sky Cowboy series SO U KNOW WHAT I'M READING NEXT]
Anyway, I loved this book a lot. It was a great finale to the series.
E-ARC is received thanks to the publisher via Netgalley.
So. I didn't expect Gabe to be this broody but I also wasn't surprised. As the books progressed, I noticed Gabe getting surlier and surlier in the background, almost as if he retreated more and more into himself as his best friends got better mentally and found love. It was painful to read because Gabe started off this series as quite the fun guy, but at the start of his book he was someone else.
It was both fun and frustrating seeing Monica and Gabe interact with each other. Gabe obviously had issues with therapists, and he blatantly refused to get treatment because he said he didn't need any. He annoyed Monica a lot, shutting down her attempts of communication with sarcastic and sometimes rude remarks.
In the previous books we didn't get to see a lot of Monica beyond her therapist duties, but in this we got to be in her head and read her thoughts and fears, and that made her more real to me. Her fear regarding her son Colin was understandable and valid, but it also frustrated me so that she was too paranoid to let him go free. Gabe made her faced the fact that she couldn't keep her son in a bubble.
I shed many tears reading this book, mainly for Gabe because what he went through in his youth damaged him so badly to the point that he didn't trust love, and he already accepted that he would be alone in life. It took a lot of work for Monica and the other men to hammer into him that he was loved and that he was deserving of it. The groveling scene was a bit short, I feel but sweet nonetheless (and there was a llama involved so points for that). The epilogue just made me cry happy tears.
I wonder if Nicole wrote books on the Shaws and Lanes because the way the families were mentioned sounds like they had their own stories, so I have to check.
[Update: SHE HAD!!! It's the Big Sky Cowboy series SO U KNOW WHAT I'M READING NEXT]
Anyway, I loved this book a lot. It was a great finale to the series.
E-ARC is received thanks to the publisher via Netgalley.