Reviewer: Tracy
The Ugly Christmas Sweater by Jackie Paxson
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: November 5, 2019
Format: eBook
Source: Author
Point-of-View: First
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 260
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7 Reasons to Never Do a Favor for Your Best Friend:

1. It’s an ugly sweater party
2. The party is full of handsy executives
3. It’s an ugly sweater party
4. It’s an open bar and you need lots of alcohol to get through the party
5. It’s an ugly sweater party
6. Your friend leaves you to humiliate yourself in front of a sexy suit
7. It’s an ugly sweater party

Being a good friend means attending a corporate Christmas party with the ugliest sweater your friend could find. Cierra is a very good friend. However, coping with the party with the open bar lends her to humiliating herself with the sexiest guy there.

Justin knows the girl who threw up on his shoes at his company’s Christmas party, if only he could remember where. Between her drunken slurs and unfiltered conversation, she was the most fascinating woman he’d ever met.

Christmas is the season filled with love and cheer. Can a woman with no filter and a billionaire CEO find a way to survive the season, fall in love, and save an animal shelter in the process?

Cierra reluctantly says yes when one of her best friends asks her to attend her company Christmas party with her.  When she finds out it’s an ugly Christmas sweater party she’s even less thrilled.  She attends but decides to get completely drunk so she can drown out the fact that she’s there.  She doesn’t expect to meet a gorgeous man and do some dirty dancing.  She manages this, but by the time she met the man, she was already 3 sheets.  She ends up throwing up on him and then in the ladies room with the man holding her hair. 

Cierra is mortified the next day when she realizes what an ass she made of herself the night before.  When it turns out that the gorgeous guy she puked on is the one she’s been drooling over at the coffee shop, she’s mortified. (She was really drunk.  Drunk enough she didn’t even recognize the guy.) That doesn’t stop the man, Justin, from asking her out.  Cierra agrees and is thrilled when she has a great time. 

Cierra and Justin soon become an item, but there are issues to deal with.  Cierra is now working as an event planner at the company where Justin is the CEO.  He’s extremely wealthy, she’s not.  She’s got a smart mouth, he’s pretty tame.  His mother wants him to marry someone else and hates Cierra.  Yeah, issues. 

Justin’s mother was a complete bitch for 95% of the book.  Even though she was only on page about 3 times she made a BIG impression.  I disliked her a lot.  She was grieving the recent loss of her husband but that didn’t give her the right to treat Cierra like she was worse than pond scum. 

There was a “sort of” side story that had to do with an animal rescue that Cierra and Justin were trying to save that was cute.  I liked it, but it seemed a strange roundabout excuse to have Cierra and Justin work together when they were already working together – you know what I mean?  Not my choice, but I didn’t write the book.

Nothing bowled me over in this story, and I got annoyed at Cierra a couple of times because of her attitude towards things, but in the end it I thought it was just a cute Christmas book.

Rating: 3 out of 5