Love in the Stacks (Love in New Bedford, #2)

by Delilah Peters

[llamareads]

Even though I’m happily wallowing in Halloween-themed romances, given my general love for the Dirty Bits line and romances featuring librarians, I happily snatched this Christmas novella up. There’s a Christmas party, complete with one of those annoying gift games, ugly Christmas sweaters, and then, as the piece de resistance, the main couple gets snowed in at the library. I’m such a sucker for library sex – don’t ask me why, thinking about people actually getting it on IRL at the library is pretty squicky.

For an erotic Christmas novella, the character development is decent. Poppy’s determined to hit on the hot but awkward new librarian who’s been holing himself up in the basement, so she brings him hot chocolate. Which, naturally, she spills all over the place, so naturally she has to take off her Christmas sweater. There’s definitely chemistry between her and Ben, but she can’t quite figure out if he’s in to her or not.

Ben’s not neurotypical, and one of the ways it shows up is that he doesn’t pick up on non-verbal cues. That misunderstanding provides a lot of the main stress on the relationship. Poppy’s confused by what she sees as mixed signals – he kisses her, but then scowls at her and refuses to talk to her. Once Ben explains, though, what follows is some pretty thoughtful (and sexy) verbal communication. The sex scenes are super hot and work well in the storyline.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about Ben’s inability to understand non-verbal cues as the main impediment to the relationship. I liked seeing a neurodivergent hero, and I thought it did a good job showing how he cared for Poppy – for instance, buying her a tire gauge as a Christmas present when he noticed that her tires needed air. There is some anti-neurodivergent language – the other librarians refer to Benjamin as the troll since he prefers spending time in his basement office – and Poppy calls them on it, but it still felt pretty icky.

Overall, I did enjoy this, though I still have reservations about Ben’s representation and I'll be looking for some own voices reviews.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.