4⭐️
Sam is the manager of a home furnishings store that isn’t doing well. When the notoriously cruel CEO calls him to head office and threatens to fire him, an opportunity presents itself: after the CEO, Jonathan, threatens to fire his whole team, Sam falls and blacks out. A concussion! But Sam soon realizes that pretending to have lost his memory could be the perfect opportunity to save his team! And Jonathan will have to keep an eye on Sam while he recovers! 

There are a lot about this book. First of all, the writing is absolutely fantastic quality. It’s written in first person from Sam‘s perspective. You can really feel his personality as well as the personality of the other side characters. His way of speaking and his narration are definitely entertaining. Another thing that the author does really well is describing characters. There are a lot of side characters that aren’t really important to the plot, but they still all have vibrant personalities, and the way the author writes makes it really easy to picture them and even tell them apart when there are like 10 different characters in the same room. It’s also really satisfying to watch. Jonathan start as an extreme grump, and slowly become more comfortable and vulnerable. I also really love how much he loves the really disgusting nasty cat.

To be honest, the premise, the writing, and even the characters are all really well done. The only reason that this book wasn’t five stars for me was because I just felt like it went on for a little bit too long. Like, some things were described in so much detail that really weren’t necessary, and I found myself kind of wanting to get to the point. There was also a lot of family drama that I didn’t particularly care for. 

Overall this was a great read! A good Christmas book! 

Delightful!!!! 

The humor and tone of Sam as a main character captured me right from the start, and I really liked listening to the Liverpool accent in the audiobook which I think is probably an unpopular opinion (although sometimes books about British people get insufferably British at times)

Although I did listen to both Boyfriend Material and Husband Material, this is such a loose spinoff (Jonathan is the connecting character, and he’s in like one scene in Husband Material) that it’s not necessary to read those to enjoy/understand this one

It is also sneakily a holiday romance, as it takes place during the Christmas season but that’s not advertised in the summary

Hall did a good job of making Sam’s work team lovable enough to make me forgive how incompetent they are, which is a must in order for the premise of this book to work. And the steady reveal/redemption of Jonathan’s character was done so well that I fell for him right alongside Sam

I appreciate that in this contemporary “enemies” to lovers romance they really had to fight to reach an understanding. The bickering, the arguing, the challenging each other worked to make the romance feel truly earned. I like teared up at the couch scene

The large cast was handled really well. Between the team of Sam’s coworkers and Jonathan’s large family, it’s a lot of people but they were all distinctive and fun

I really really enjoyed this book, such a refreshing listen after my last one

This was soooo cute!!! 💖 Also very fun to have a Scouse accent (took a second to get used to it).