Welcome Home for Christmas (Hero’s Welcome: Book 4) by Annie Rains

4 Stars

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group – Loveswept, Loveswept

Date of Publication: November 8th, 2016

Genre: Romance

Series: Hero’s Welcome

Welcome to Forever – Book 1

Welcome to Forever-Starting Today – Book 1.5

Welcome Home, Cowboy – Book 2

Welcoming the Bad Boy – Book 3 (review here)

Welcome Home for Christmas – Book 4

Where you can find this book: Barnes and Noble

Book synopsis:

Three-hundred-and-sixty-four days a year, Allison Carmichael doesn’t mind being single. It sure beats dating another loser, and it keeps her heart safe. Then there’s that three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth day: Christmas Eve, the traditional time her entire family gathers together—and gangs up on her, demanding to know when she’s going to get married. This year, she swears, is going be different. And that’s why, at a charity auction she’s throwing on-base, she buys herself a man.
 
Sergeant Troy Matthews insists that he’s not for sale. His time is, though, and he’s happy to donate it. Happier still when he learns the identity of the winning bidder: the redhead with the killer good looks and smart mouth who runs the veteran’s center. Allison needs Troy’s help to fool her family into believing they’re an item, and he’s all too happy to indulge her. But by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, their little charade is working a little too well . . . because Troy’s falling head over heels.

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My review:

Allison was perfectly happy being single until it hits Christmas time. Then she gets all sorts of stressed out. Why does she get stressed out? Because normally, she doesn’t have a date for her family’s Christmas party. And if she does have a date, her mother, a psychiatrist, analyzes him and then tells Allison what she thinks of him. Which normally isn’t a lot and she has predicted Allison’s breakups. So, yeah, that would stress anyone out.

Troy is an MP on base who is a love them and leave them type of guy and Christmas is not his favorite holiday. This year, instead of celebrating Christmas, he was planning on spending it alone. The reason why he was planning on spending it alone? He was still smarting over a fight that he got into with his brother over 2 years ago over Troy being in the Marines instead of running a business. Which to be honest, it struck me as a stupid reason to be mad at someone. But I have seen relationships with families ruined over less so this did strike me as totally believable.

Allison and Troy meet, unknown to both of them when Allison is picking up wine for a charity event at the Veterans Center that she runs. Troy, who happened to be behind her, warned her about partying too hard and Allison gave him this funny, flip answer before leaving. The next time they meet was when Allison buys Troy at the charity auction she was running. Her reason for buying him? She needs him to pretend to be her boyfriend at her family’s Christmas party and she was willing to spend extra money for the extra hours (ie dates) for them to get to know each other.

The book gets pretty standard from that point on with Allison and Troy. They both fall into having sex with each other. That kinda annoyed me because Allison made a huge deal about not jumping into bed with him and then bam, two chapters later, she did. Not that I minded the sex scenes, they were pretty hot and there was one with pretty inventive use of a 6″ purple, sparkly vibrator. Speaking of that, I was cracking up laughing when she realized that she left it out when she thought she was getting robbed and Troy noticed. I literally couldn’t breathe, I was laughing so hard.

The three subplots (one being Allison’s issues with her mother, the other being the robber and the 3rd being Troy’s issues with his brother) that was wrapped up pretty quickly. But the storyline with the children’s home wasn’t wrapped up until the epilogue and I LOVED how it was wrapped up. I had a huge permagrin on my face.

Speaking of the ending, I loved it and it totally fits with the book!!!

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I would give Welcome Home for Christmas an Adult rating. There is sex. There is language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread Welcome Home for Christmas. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**