Holly‘s review of Any Given Christmas (Sugar Shack, Book 2) by Candis Terry

Dean Silverthorne’s mother may be dead, but she still has matchmaking to do.

When an injury dashes NFL Quarterback Dean Silverthorne’s Super Bowl dreams, he heads back to Deer Lick, Montana with a chip on his wounded shoulder and more determined than ever to get back in the game. He loves his kooky family, but his trip home is nothing but a very brief Christmas visit.

His game plan didn’t include an instant attraction to Emma Hart, a feisty kindergarten teacher who seems to be the only person in Deer Lick not interested in the hometown hero. Or his dearly departed mom popping up with mistletoe in hand and meddling on the mind. Now Dean can’t help but wonder if there’s more to love than life between the goal posts.

Beware: This review is riddled with spoilers.

This is the second book in Terry’s Sugar Shack series. I believe it can stand alone.

Emma is a school teacher who wants to find a man to spend her life with. A man who is not like football star Dean Silverthorne. She doesn’t do bad boys – in bed or otherwise – anymore. And Dean is the baddest of them all.

Dean has taken a couple hard hits on the field, which means he’s got some time off to recover. Spending it in Deer Lick isn’t exactly his idea of a good time, but his dad needs him. Emma would be the perfect distraction…if only she didn’t seem immune to him.

As they spend more time togther, Dean and Emma realize they aren’t so different..but can Emma let go of her past enough to embrace what could be a bright future?

Ok, here’s the thing about this book. It features a theme I loathe. One that, unfortunately, is seen quite often in romance. The hero being punished for his past (or, alternately, the heroine being punished for her past – though this is less prevalent). I do not believe a man (or woman) should be judged based on things that happened in their past. Unless they’re mass murders or something equally nefarious (something no romance hero should ever be…unless they’re highly trained, super speshul government agents – but that’s a post for another day). Just because a man (or woman) has a checkered past (i.e., slept around a lot) doesn’t necessarily make him (or her) a bad person.

In this case, Dean is known as one of the bad boys of football. He’s wild and crazy. He parties hard. He dates (ok, sleeps with) a lot of women. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy. It means he’s a bit of a manwhore, but even manwhores can have good qualities. Are they the best candidate for happily ever after? Probably not. But are they lower than dirt? No. No they aren’t.

Right from the beginning Emma jumps to the conclusion that Dean is an asshole because he dates sleeps around a lot. How sleeping with a lot of women makes him an asshole, I’m not quite sure. Does he torture small children? No. Does he talk crap about his mother? No. Is he careful to let the women in his life know he isn’t interested in something long term? Yes. So..again, not the best candidate for Wuv, Twu Wuv, but not an asshole.

I was really enjoying this until about 3/4 of the way through. Then the heroines “poor me” routine got old. She was selfish and immature.

Emma had a bad experience when she was in high school. She was one of the nerdy chicks who didn’t get out much. She was invited to one of the cool kid parties and ended up giving her virginity to a friend of Dean’s – who was home from college and brought his buddy to visit – and he never bothered to call her the next day. Then some other stuff happened. The moral of the story? Bad boys aren’t to be trusted. There are so many things wrong with that kind of thinking, but I was able to move past that and go with the flow.

Until Emma started acting like a selfish bitch. She wanted Dean but didn’t want to want him. Even though he treated her really well and was there for her when she needed someone, she still pushed him away. No matter that his present actions showed him to be a compassionate, responsible man, she still insisted he was nothing but a douche bag who was going to screw her over. I went along with this until toward the end of the book. Then I just couldn’t take it anymore.

The final conflict came about because Dean’s career imploded. He thought he’d be able to go back to playing football, but he was told he needed a lot more PT before that could happen. He is then released from the team. Instead of calling Emma, he heads straight home so he can be with her. She hears about it on the news and decides to kick Dean out of her life because he didn’t come to her first. Dean has just had a major blow to his self-esteem, but are her thoughts with him? No. She was focused only on herself. “If Dean really cared about me he would have called me before he called anyone else.” Of course what she doesn’t know is that Dean asked the announcement be held over the weekend and his first thoughts were of her. He just wanted to see her in person. All this because she went through a bad time 10 years ago. Really?

On top of that everyone – including her – blamed the Dean for everything. She was the one who kept pushing him away and judging him based on things that happened in her past. Yet he was in the wrong? He had to apologize and grovel? No. Just no.

I did like Dean. Though he started out as a jaded playboy, he really grew up over the course of the novel.  I also liked the bits with his mom, mostly because of his reaction to seeing her ghost. Too bad he was saddled with such a terrible heroine.

I enjoyed the first book in this series enough that I’ll read the next book. I hope its better than this one.

 2.5 out of 5

The series:

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.