Snow Place Like Home (Home Sweet Holidays) by Laura Pavlov Narrator: Abigail Reno, Sean Masters
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Series: Home Sweet Holidays #1
Pages: 57
Length: 1 hour and 8 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 20, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads
After a devastating breakup, a sunny veterinarian goes home to the mountains to lick her wounds—and savor a holiday snack—in this heartfelt story from Laura Pavlov, author of the Blushing series.
At her brother’s wedding, Goldie Jacobs brushes shoulders with Ace Bonetti, his childhood best friend turned Hollywood hotshot. Ace has been crushing on Goldie ever since high school, and seeing her again reminds him exactly why. They spend one toe-curling night together, then part ways, expecting nothing more. But when those moments under the mistletoe felt so right, how can they ever let each other go?
Laura Pavlov’s Snow Place Like Home is part of Home Sweet Holidays, a cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances sure to bring color to your cheeks. Read or listen to each story in a single heart-fluttering sitting. And to fully immerse yourself in the charm of the season, don’t miss a special message from each of our holiday heroes!
My Review:
The blurb for this year’s series of Amazon’s holiday originals collection, Home Sweet Holidays, proclaims that what they have in store for readers – and listeners, is a “cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances.”
This series opener, Snow Place Like Home, is plenty sweet – but it’s definitely the fruitcake of the collection. It’s a bit crazy, a bit spicy, and has more than a bit of whatever it will take to make the reader/listener a bit tipsy with delight.
Goldie Jacobs’ brother Jack, his fiancée Holly, and, in fact, the rest of her family, are what Goldie calls “those people”. Not in a bad way, not at all, but maybe just a bit much and over-the-top for Goldie.
Jack and Holly are getting married on Christmas Day, because they’re names are, well, Christmas-y. Every single thing about the wedding, from the date to the theme to the OMG costumes required for the rehearsal dinner, all have to be holiday-themed and all have to be pre-approved by the happy couple.
This isn’t bridezilla-ness, they’re like this for every single possible occasion all the time. They’re just that picture perfect and happy about it and want to share it with everyone around them. Whether the people they’re sharing with, like Goldie or Jack’s best friend Ace, are remotely into that sort of picture perfect planning and presentation or not. In Goldie’s case, definitely not.
It’s not that everyone, including Goldie, doesn’t always have a good time and won’t this time. Jack and Holly – and also Goldie’s parents Suzie and Joe – are really good at this kind of thing. But it’s not what Goldie would choose and she certainly wouldn’t choose to be in the spotlight – which is inevitable at least for a bit, because people who love the spotlight don’t always get that not everyone does.
As much fun, perversely fascinating, and often laugh-out-loud worthy the setup of this story is, the heart of the story is about the maid of honor and the best man, Goldie Jacobs and her brother’s lifelong bestie, Ace Bonetti. Back in the day, they had crushes on each other, never admitted it for real-life reasons, but equally never got over it.
Now they’re both adults, they’re single at the same time, and Ace’s brief visit back home is a chance for both of them to finally put their cards on the table. If they have the courage to take that chance to see if the dreams they’ve each kept so close to their hearts can turn into a real-life happy ever after.
Escape Rating A-: If this had been told from Jack and/or Holly’s perspective, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the story half as much as I did. Because I’d be on the sidelines with Goldie in this one, snarking at the over-the-top-ness of it all. What made it work for me is that both Goldie and Ace think the whole thing is ridiculous but they love these people and they’ll deal to be part of their celebration. But it’s not their thing and they both think it’s crazy. And it is crazy that their approved costumes were Rudolph for Goldie and The Grinch for Ace. (At least they’re both warm enough on this very cold and snowy Christmas Eve!) I loved their commentary, and also loved that they both let themselves go with it even if it’s definitely not their style.
It helped a LOT that I listened to this one, because the story is told from Goldie and Jack’s alternating first-person perspectives. It felt like I was perched on their shoulders, listening to their voices, telling me their thoughts. And Abigail Reno as Goldie and Sean Masters as Ace both did terrific jobs with the characters.
While the setup of the story is what earns the fruitcake, the heart of the story – what’s been in both Goldie’s and Ace’s own hearts all these years – is what makes the story such a sweet treat. While the romance straddles the line between two romantic tropes beautifully, specifically the best friend’s little sister taboo and the friends into lovers storylines, what makes this one special is that it’s the friends into lovers trope that wins the day. Back in high school, Ace did see Goldie as off-limits because he didn’t want to involve her in his family’s mess. She didn’t try to cross the line from friends into more because Ace is already an unofficial member of her family and she didn’t want to ruin that with a possible rejection.
Also, of course, they were teenagers and clueless, but it’s the friendship angle that sticks. HER family is HIS primary support, throwing a messy rejection into that wouldn’t have been fair to him. Now that they are adults there’s a real chance but her reluctance to rock the boat feels very realistic.
Which made the happy ever after just that much more delicious when it happens! Snow Place Like Home turned out to be the perfect holiday story to kick off this year’s collection. Now I can’t wait to start the next story, Merry and Bright, and not just because, in spite of the title, it’s a HANUKKAH STORY!
