Christmas With The Marine and Her Naughty Holiday Audiobook Review

Christmas with The Marine by Candace Havens and Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz

Narrated by Alexander Cendese and Gabrielle Cendese

Holiday Romance. Both complete standalones but part of series.

I’m a Christmas book whore, and I think this combo may be this year’s favorite, despite the fact that Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz is actually a Thanksgiving book. WHY would they combine these???? At least put the Thanksgiving story first!

Christmas With The Marine by Candace Havens, narrated by Alexander Cendese

Major Ben Hawthorne lost a bet with friends and he was then in charge of buying all of the gifts on the Marine’s Toys for Tots gift list. As he was struggling in the Barbie section, another shopper came to his rescue. Ainsley was a professional shopper and she was excited to lend a hand on his quest.

They were both into their careers and had friends and family that forever try to set them up, so they decided to be each other’s plus-one for the holidays. With Ben growing up poor and Ainsley rich, some difficulties ensued, but I really enjoyed the way it was all handled.

Christmas with the Marine was a sweet, sexy, and fun read that totally got me in the Christmas spirit.

Narration: Alexander Cendese has a great guy voice, but I usually don’t like how he does females. This one was better than others I have heard him do.

Rating: 4 Stars, 3.5 Heat, 4.5 Narration

Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz narrated by Gabrielle Cendese

NEW FAVORITE ALERT!!!!!! Unfortunately, Her Naughty Holiday was actually a Thanksgiving book, so it was a weird combination to put these together, especially with this one second, but it didn’t stop me from absolutely LOVING this one! Gabrielle Cendese became a new favorite narrator. So much so that I’m not even sure if it was the narrator or the story I loved so much. I’ll just go with saying it was both.

Clover comes from a family of academics. She has a very successful nursery with two locations, but her family still treats the thirty-year-old like it is her hobby and she plays with plants all day. All they care about is that she doesn’t have a man in her life. When they all inform her they are coming to her for Thanksgiving, her anxiety is at an all-time high. Ruthie, her 17-year-old feminist and activist assistant suggests she hire a male escort to pose as her boyfriend, or maybe her 38-year-old hot dad, Erick can do the job.

“Are you offering to pay me to sleep with you?” He asked. “I hope so. That’s been a fantasy all my life. I can go to a bar and you can come in and pick me up. We don’t have to use real money. I’ll accept Monopoly-“
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Bummer,” he said. It was. He’d been nursing a crush on his daughter’s boss for a good year now, ever since he met Clover the day Ruthie started working at the nursery.

He agrees to the deal, but they need to spend time to get to know each other before the holiday so they could pull it off, and let me tell you, they got to know each other in every way.

OMG, the banter between this couple was honestly some of my most favorite of any book I have read. I LOVE banter, and this couple talked and laughed so much, even during sex.

“He was the most erotic, sexy, sensual, dirty-mouthed man she’d ever known.”

Ruthie, the daughter, was super smart and snarky, and I absolutely loved her typical smart, activist teenager attitude. She was 17 going on 40. She was so lucky to have an amazing dad in Erick, and I loved how he joked around about how he couldn’t wait for her to move out whilst simultaneously acting like an amazing, involved dad.

The only thing that brought Her Naughty Holiday from 5++++ stars to 5 stars was her lack of sexual history, even at 30. This didn’t add anything to the story, and in fact, took away from how refreshing an older couple was.

The Narration: The first thing I did was to search for more books by Gabrielle Cendese. She was so unbelievably perfect for this funny banter-filled book, but there is only one other book I could find unless she uses another name. I really hope to hear more from her, because she is a new favorite voice! I assume she is Alexander Cendese’s wife.

Her Naughty Holiday is actually second in the Men at Work Series by Tiffany Reisz. The first is Her Halloween Treat (Kindle | Audio), then Her Naughty Holiday (Kindle | Audio), then One Hot December (Kindle | Audio). I will be grabbing them all.

I absolutely loved Her Naughty Holiday. If you love an older couple, a single dad, and TONS of conversation and banter, this is the book for you!