He's lonely, he’s homesick, and it really doesn’t feel like Christmas with hot weather, no snow, and no egg nog.

They were supposed to be together embarking on a new adventure until a family emergency caused his mother to return to Canada. Levi, a Canuck, has recently moved to Perth, Australia with his mother and feels like a stranger. I thought this was an adorable novella by two wonderful authors :) Cool Story, Bro is available as a freebie as part of the Winter Giveaway on Prolific Works. I also didn't care much for the meddling children at the end. It just didn't get enough page time, and was spoiled by the surrounding retail environment. It's kind of ridiculous, but not obnoxiously so, and I hoped for something dumb and sappy so it delivered in that regard. The actual romantic gesture is cute, though. For as short as the story already is, it likely could have been cut in half to remove the repetitive anvil-to-the-head level usage of both. Stop finding ways to point out all of these things every two sentences! On top of that, the majority of the story felt like the authors were gloating about how many stereotypes and cliches they knew and how much regional slang they'd learned with regards to Canada and Australia. I get it: working retail is dehumanizing and demoralizing, Levi thinks Christmas should be snowy, Travis is very Australian, and they find each other attractive. However, I believe this contained too much focus on holiday-season retail work and was too repetitive. So take my grouching with a grain of salt. The mood was also spoiled a bit by Levi's family situation hitting a little too close to home for me and putting a grey cloud over the story, which lingered from an early point all the way to the end.

This is probably a case of me being a Grinch, because I didn't mind the writing itself except for a few editing errors (including a Canadian in Australia referring to the temperature in Farenheit).

Cool Story, Bro by Lisa Henry