All She Wants for Christmas By: Janelle Denison Series: Wilde Book Number: 1.1 Star Rating: Sensuality Rating:

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Synopsis

Faith Roberts has been admiring sexy pediatric surgeon, Matthew Carlton, from afar for months. He has asked her out several times, but she's always turned him down cold. Faith has already had her heart broken by one rich playboy, and with Matthew's reputation, she's not about to get involved with another one. It is Christmas though, and with her family out of town, Faith decides to give herself a very naughty gift. When Matthew dresses as Santa to entertain the children at the hospital and pulls her into his lap, she whispers her secret wish in his ear. Matthew can hardly believe what he's hearing, but he's not about to pass up a chance to finally get the woman of his dreams. He's been determined to make Faith more than just his lover, but he's certainly not averse to pulling out all the stops in the bedroom to fulfill her fantasies and hopefully convince her to be his forever.

Review

It took me a little while to get into All She Wants for Christmas mainly because when I started it, I couldn't help thinking that it was basically a carbon copy of the first two books of the Wilde series. Hero who has an undeserved "bad boy" persona, but underneath really has a heart of gold and strong family ties - check. Heroine who only wants a sexual fling because of a past relationship gone bad with a similar type of guy - check. Hero who doggedly pursues the heroine attempting to convince her she's "the one" for him - check. If it hadn't been for the redundancy or if I had spread them out and hadn't just read the first two Wilde stories within the last month, I might have been able to give this one keeper status.

Matthew was a to-die-for hero, a rich, successful pediatric surgeon who's great with kids, and unbeknownst to anyone has been looking for a woman who wants him and not his money or the prestige of being married to a doctor. Faith is a schoolteacher and hospital volunteer who loves kids every bit as much as he does, and has been attracted to his seemingly good heart as well as his gorgeous body. However, Matthew has a really bad reputation with the ladies around the hospital, and after a nasty breakup that left her heartbroken, she hasn't been able to bring herself to take a chance on him and accept his numerous requests for dates. Instead she decides to ask him for her Christmas wish of a steamy one-night stand.

I loved that Matthew had wanted Faith for six months and the second she gave him an opening, he was ready, willing and able to do anything and everything to convince her that he was in love with her. He was definitely a dream man who knew how to seduce and pamper a woman. If I weren't a married woman, I wouldn't mind finding a Matthew under my tree on Christmas morning to "unwrap.";-) I could kind of understand Faith's reluctance to get involved with Matthew thinking what she did of him. I don't mind sexually aggressive heroines once in a while, but I just don't relate to them quite as well as ones who aren't. Perhaps having three heroines in a row like that who also harbored the same basic commitment issues, was just a bit too much for me. I was glad, however, that she didn't fight it for long. I can't imagine any woman being able to resist Matthew after all he did for her, so at least that part was believable for me.

Aside from the plot and character repetition, so far, all the Wilde series stories have been pretty good reads, and overall, so was All She Wants for Christmas. This novella gives a brief introduction to Chayse Douglas who is apparently acquainted with Adrian Wilde and becomes his heroine in the next story, The Wilde One (Bad Boys to Go anthology), and Ashley St. Claire who is the heroine of book #5, The Wilde Side. I do plan to continue with the Wilde series but hope that Janelle Denison has a bit more creativity in store for future books, or maybe I should just put a lot more space in between them. All She Wants for Christmas is found in the Jingle Bell Rock anthology.

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Janelle Denison

Themes

Christmas Stories
Doctors, Nurses, & Medical Professionals
Opposite Sides of the Track