Rating: 4 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel

Jamie has been waiting patiently for the chance to make Raven Books into everything he imagines it can be. He has faithfully stood by Uncle Billy, giving up his own chance at college in order to take care of the man when he fell sick, only to discover that the plan for him to become owner and full manager of the store is in jeopardy of ever happening. With his little daughter, Mia, to care for and his own home just a small apartment over the store itself, losing Raven Books will signal the end to all Jamie’s dreams and to remaining in the small town he loves. Jamie needs a Christmas miracle and never suspects that Mia’s substitute teacher, Stanton Potter, may be the angel he’s looking for to save him.

Author Eli Easton has taken the premise of the holiday film, It’s a Wonderful Life, and morphed it into a lovely romance, Angels Sing, the second in her Daddy Dearest series. Based loosely on the aforementioned film, it stars two men who have little in common other than their attraction to each other. Stanton is hilarious, at turns, as the physical education teacher turned first-grade, short-term substitute. His main goal is to get through the next few weeks until the real sub can arrive to take the class and hope he survives. With the thought of a Christmas pageant looming in the future, the guy is terrified he will not make it, but then Jamie comes along—talented, sweet Jamie who offers to help and Stanton falls hard for the gender fluid younger man.

As Stanton fumbles through trying to get Jamie to go on a date, clandestinely due to it being frowned upon for teachers to date parents, he must also grapple with the fact that while he has always known he is bisexual, no one else but his mother really does. So Stanton boldly comes out and goes after the man who makes him feel like jelly inside.

Jamie, for his part, is fully invested in his daughter and everything comes second to that. But Stanton is hard to resist and, before long, Jamie too is smitten. However, the looming closure of the store keeps reminding both men that theirs is a potentially short lived romance and it weighs heavily on poor Jamie.

I enjoyed this story. There is lots of it that is impractical and unbelievable and would never really stand the scrutiny of the real world, but if you check your disbelief at the door and enter into this lovely romance, then I think you won’t be disappointed. Eli Easton does romance so well and Angels Sing is no exception. There are a few surprises in this novel—how Jamie becomes a father is one of them and just who is squeezing poor Uncle Billy out of his building is another. Again, regarding Jamie’s fatherhood and his undying devotion for little Mia, you have to be ready for a child-centric story for this is decidedly one. I do think this is a book influenced by a dreamy sense of what could happen in a perfect world, much like the film it is based on, and if you can approach it that way, I think you will be pleased.

Angels Sing is a good old-fashioned romance complete with a Christmas miracle and two men who fall in love despite their differences. It is a warm and inviting story that begs one to park reality outside in the snow and enter into its cozy embrace.