Holidays With the Wongs – Cannonball Read 17

A Pair of Novellas for the February Holidays

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year by Jackie Lau

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day by Jackie Lau

January 31, 2022 by faintingviolet 2 Comments

When I read Donut Fall in Love two weeks ago I was reminded almost viscerally of two of Jackie Lau’s novellas from her Holidays with the Wongs series. The chemistry between Donut’s Ryan and Lindsay had the same sort of feeling that A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year’s Zach and Jo did, and it made me want to revisit them, and with Chinese New Year this week (February 1st) I needed no further inducement to pick it back up and give myself a Monday […]

Another delightful Lau novella

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day by Jackie Lau

April 2, 2020 by Malin 1 Comment

Official book description: Amber Wong has landed her dream job at the Stratford Festival, and life is looking good. Sure, she hasn’t had sex in so long that her condoms have expired, but she’ll just pick up some new ones, along with some discounted Christmas chocolate, at the grocery store. And that’s where she runs into Dr. Sebastian Lam, the son of her parents’ close friends, whom she hasn’t seen in years. He’s moved back to Ontario, newly single, and… Oh my God. He’s really […]

Fake dating, friends to lovers and a hilarious game of pictionary

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year by Jackie Lau

February 23, 2020 by Malin Leave a Comment

After the active interference of his parents and grandparents with the matchmaking extravaganza over Thanksgiving, Zack Wong is very worried that something similar will be repeated for Chinese New Year, especially since two of his brothers now have girlfriends, and the family seem determined that all four Wong children end up in happy couples. To make sure his family can’t meddle in his personal life a second time, he talks his good friend, Jo MacGregor, into posing as his fake girlfriend. They even go on a […]

A Valentine’s Delight

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day (Holidays with the Wongs #4) by Jackie Lau

February 8, 2020 by faintingviolet Leave a Comment

In recent months Jackie Lau has jumped to the “read right away” position as her novellas in the Holidays with the Wongs series has been released. While I didn’t get an ARC this time, I have signed up to be considered in future. A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day makes me feel that was a very good choice. Picking up after the events of A Match Made for Thanksgiving and A Second Chance Road Trip for Christmas and running concurrently with A Fake Girlfriend for […]

One Night Stand Fail

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

January 18, 2020 by Jen K Leave a Comment

I saw faintingviolet’s review for the third novella in this series, and she mentioned that in the first novella, the parents had ambushed all four of their adult children with Thanksgiving set ups which were based on romance novellas tropes – the set ups were a disaster but I was curious to see what tropes their parents had tried to force, and picked the Thanksgiving novella as a result. Nick is the middle brother in his family, and lives in Toronto. He loves the city […]

Lau writes characters you care about – and that’s a really good thing.

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year (Holidays with the Wongs #3) by Jackie Lau

January 11, 2020 by faintingviolet 18 Comments

I continue to love the conceit of these novellas; there are four Wong children, all unattached, and their parents and grandparents hatch a plan to set them up with potential partners at Canadian Thanksgiving based on the tropes in the romance novels that their mother and grandmother read. The initial matches go terribly, but as the holidays progress each Wong sibling finds love in different romantic tropey ways. For A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year Lau combined the friends to lovers and fake relationship […]

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