This book should come with a warning label because it is HOT! I finished this book in less than 24 hours with a full time corporate job! It is a quick and fun read that will having you wanting to experience hot springs and an idealistic town like North Powell.

Digital #bookmail 🥳

#WhyIHeldYourHand by @augustareillyb is a fun & quick #holiday #romcom that will definitely keep you warm this winter! 🔥 🔥 🔥

Is this one on your #holidayreading #TBRlist?

Thank you to @getredpr via @netgalley for this gifted digital copy!

Rhapsodic Press, published 10/23/20, and on sale right now via Amazon! Synopsis in comment below.

#holidayromance #christmasreading
#bookworm #alwaysreading #booksofinstagram #booklover #bookish #bibliophile #igreads #fiction #bookstafam #bookstagramcommunity #readersofinstagram
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This one was not for me. It had cute, small town Hallmark-y moments only to have a chapter full of steam the next. I don't mind either type of romance book, but the contrast between the two just didn't flow for me. I also felt like the romance was forced to support the love triangle. I know there will be readers that enjoy this one, it just wasn't for me.

A sweet and steamy romance! I enjoyed this one, and I really liked the love triangle, it was done very well. I wasn’t sure who she would end up with but, I loved both of the love interests and was happy with the ending. A quick, fun, super steamy read, I’m glad I read it!

This was a great read! This ended up being a sweet love triangle story. The story is about Laura who convinces her town to hire a marketing team to help boost her towns image. She begins a relationship with David, one of the men from company. They have this relationship secretly. In the meantime she is spending suppose to be meeting with Spence every Monday to work on plans for city. She does this but also he has become interested in an old house she has been restoring on Monday’s. They begin spending Monday’s together. At first she doesn’t think of him romantically but then things begins to change. Laura suddenly finds herself in love with two men.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this title. Unfortunately, this is not the type of book I like. I thought it would be more of a rom com, but it's way more steamy than I prefer. Therefore, I will not leave a review on Goodreads as I didn't finish the book.

Thanks to Rhapsodic Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy of Why I Held Your Hand.

I was hoping this would have been more of a Christmas-y book but the Dickens Festival was such a small part of the book. I liked the small town and storyline of trying to bring more tourism to the town, but I'm not a big love triangle fan. This was a much steamier than I expected...

I really thought this would be more of a wintry Christmas book. This book, however, begins in the summer and Laura has hired KSP to help her save her little town from disaster. She meets David and instantly starts a romantic relationship with him, and I just really did not see any chemistry at all. Enter Spence, and we have a love triangle. Move forward six months to Christmas, and Laura must choose which man most fits in her life, while also keeping her eyes on the prize of saving her town. This read was like a Hallmark movie meets a conservative dominatrix. I enjoyed the storyline, but there may have been just too much sex in it for my liking.

Why I Held Your Hand is several types of books in one. A cozy small town, a holiday season, and lots of steamy not for the faint of heart romance. I loved this book. It truly combined so many types of books I enjoy into one and I found myself wishing it wouldn’t end and then hoping the author writes a second book….and soon!
Laura lives in a small town bursting with charm, but North Powell can’t compete with the up and coming nearby ski towns and all that they have to offer. Laura decides to hire an advertising agency to help her draw in travelers and help the town financially. She knows Main Street has so much beauty, adorable shops, amazing food, and many historic homes that could be turned into bed and breakfast for people who are looking for a quiet vacation away from the city. She loves the town but how can she make other people love it too? Laura starts working closely with David and without warning she falls head over heels for him. The two spend as much time together as possible but he lives in the city, and Laura would never want to leave her mom and her small town way of living.
Laura needs to work with Spence and show him around the town, sell him on all that North Powell has to offer tourist. The old homes need to be restored but she’s pleasantly surprised to learn Spence is also into restoring old buildings and bringing them back to life. He agrees that the ski towns have so much going for them and her town simply can’t compete, but it’s his job to highlight everything they can offer. He wants to have a Dickens festival at Christmas, and maybe push the romantic setting for Valentine’s Day, feature the butterfly garden in the spring, and use the money from these events to fix up the town. The more Laura works with Spence the more she’s seeing how compatible they are and the fact that she’s falling for him even when she’s already in love with David. How can she save her town from going bankrupt when her heart is being pulled in two directions?

OMG I loved this book! It was so interesting and engaging, and I could not get enough of the characters. The relationships built in this story are organic and real, and I enjoyed getting to the characters so much. I also loved the pacing of the story in general, and the pacing of the relationship developments between the characters. I want more about these characters! The scenery in the book was vivid and beautiful, and I felt like the story and the characters were all really relatable and tangible to the reader. Overall, an excellent read!

Laura is the hometown sweetheart hellbent on saving her town from obscurity and a subsequent financial downfall. They're losing at the tourism game, so Laura hires a marketing firm to help the town compete with two nearby vacation hotspots. Enter David, who sweeps Laura off her feet while also convincing her to hire the firm he works with. Their relationship takes off pretty quickly, with lots of heat and passion. But during the quiet moments, Laura finds herself spending a lot of time with the firm's marketing "guru", Spence -- he helps her work on a house, he proposes an event that may help save the town, and he helps her prepare for said event, all while being a good friend, even though he wants more. The subtle flirting goes right over Laura's head, but once she notices she can't "unnotice". Now she has to decide if she wants the secure life she already envisioned with David, or does she take a chance with Spence, who can show her a life she didn't realize she could have?

Thoughts: Girl meets boy, but then girl meets another boy, and now girl doesn't know which boy to choose... I'll be honest, I struggled through the first third of the book. I felt like the relationship between Laura and David was a bit rushed and also a bit flat. There wasn't a lot of chemistry there, even though it really seemed like there should be. But wow, the chemistry between Laura and Spence was off the charts! I adored them together and was charmed by how adorable and sweet he really was even after giving off such weird and negative vibes at first. And that last third of the book, when Laura has to figure out what - and who - she really wants... Just... Wow. The emotion between Laura and Spence was enough to make my heart hurt! And the passion between them was total fire! I wouldn't really say it was much of a love triangle because I felt like it was pretty clear early on which relationship was "better" for Laura, but Augusta Reilly made up for it with all of the emotion and agony the characters' all felt towards the end of the book.

A relatively shallow read that delved a bit more into the romance spectrum than I expected - we never really got to know the protagonist, Laura, well enough to care which of the 2 men in her life she chooses. To put it bluntly, although she is working diligently to bring tourism back to her small town, she does not come across as nice, caring, compassionate or any of the above.

When the protagonist treats people as disposable and gets everything she ever wanted in the end anyway - it not only rings false, but also leaves me feeling that time was wasted on this particular book. And I have been plenty entertained by books where not-so-good-people come out on top - hello, Gone Girl - but Laura's selfishness seems almost incidental, like the reader was still to believe this was a book about a good person.

With plenty of sweet holiday far out there for the reading, I would say this is one to skip.

This was a Holidayish romance that had a love triangle in it. I'm not to insane about love triangles so I was nervous about how this played out but overall i really enjoyed it and loved how it ended!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I was first drawn to Why I Held Your Hand because of the gorgeous cover. I was prepared for a cute, simple holiday romance...which it was not. This is not necessarily a holiday themed book and be prepared because it is not a Hallmark type romance either, it is s-t-e-a-m-y. Once I adjusted my expectations, I really enjoyed the book!

Our heroine, Laura, is definitely a very Hallmark-ish character. She is a local store owner who is trying to revitalize her beloved town. She hires a marketing team to help her improve the town's tourism and first walks in David. David and Laura hit it off immediately and I mean: immediately. They solidify as a couple pretty quickly, but don't get too comfortable because Spenc, another employee at the marketing agency, begins to spend time with Laura. He and Laura gradually form a strong friendship and Laura finds herself feeling things for Spenc she know she shouldn't.

Normally, I do not like love triangles or infidelity. I think they can be overdone and tedious, but it WORKED in this book. I loved both of these men throughout the book and felt for Laura's inner conflict. Was she a perfect person? No. Have we always been taught to stay faithful to our partner? Yes. But, this book does a good job at addressing that sometimes you catch feelings and no matter how hard you try to avoid it, there is nothing you can do.

In this love triangle scenario, by the end of the book I had a clear winner if I were in Laura's shoes. I won't say who I preferred, if he is ends up with her or if she ends up with anyone at all. I will say this book left me entertained and swooning until the very last sentence.

I have mixed feelings about short stories/novellas like this one. Sometimes they work for me, and sometimes they don't. Unfortunately, Why I Held Your Hand didn't work as well for me as I had hoped. I heard rave reviews from some of my friends, but I really struggle with love triangle type plots. I will say, I appreciated how steamy it was for a novella! The plot just didn't work as well as I wanted it to!

This looked like the perfect cold-weather romance, and it didn't disappoint. It was cute and fast. The characters were lovable. There was just enough steam. This reminded me of a Hallmark movie with some extra heat. It's a perfect read for the season.

In this Christmas-themed romance, Laura Delaney is only trying to do the right thing by her hometown, North Powell, and increase traffic to the small, close-knit community when she finds herself putting the town on the back burner to pursue a romance with two (out of three!) members of the marketing team. She thinks David Harper is everything she's ever wanted: handsome, smart, charismatic, excellent in bed, until she finds herself spending more time with Spence Markham, the "oddball" of the marketing team. Will she be able to find her happily ever after under the mistletoe this season?

This novel was a fun way to kick off the holiday season with and overall, I liked it but not sure if I would recommend it. The steam level was on point! That said, I never felt like there was any real sort of competition for Laura's heart. David's flaws were on full display early on and I never got the sense that Laura would have been satisfied with him one way or another. He even chose what lingerie she should wear, ignoring the fact that she mentioned she felt uncomfortable in it. I also felt like if he was the man for her, he would have fought harder for her rather than simply ordering her not to see Spence. I would have liked to see the official break-up scene - there was only a brief mention about what happened so I felt cheated.

Good story, nicely written. I would have liked a bit more depth to the characters, but overall, it was a good read.

I really wanted to like this book! I am a sucker for a small town winter romance. The cover + description of this book made me think it would be a cute Hallmark-like romance, but that is not what I got! There are some STEAMY scenes. And don't get me wrong, this author can write a good spicy scene!! I just was not expecting it.

I feel like there was A LOT going on. And because of this, I don't think the characters and their relationships were able to develop as well as they could have. I also didn't really care for David's character as he was pretty possessive and claimed that it was "love."

There definitely was potential, but another round of editing would have helped this book be even stronger, in my opinion.

Side note: I really did love the Dickens festival that happened during this book and would definitely attend.

I honestly only read the first 5 pages but the opening scene was incredibly jarring. Guy saying he was happy to see her because she wasn't wearing a bra. Girl randomly in the back seat bottom half exposed, with her hand down her shirt with a kid wearing her bra? This book is not for me.