A Surprise For The Holidays by Anna Sparrows

A Surprise for the Holidays is a lovely player/coach to lovers story that adds in a lovely slow burn friendship and a surprise six year old daughter...


From the blurb:

Bailey Peters is loving life. Scouted all the way from Adelaide, he’s been handed the Captain’s armband for the A-League’s newest soccer team, and he’s living on the Gold Coast, visiting beaches and enjoying the endless buffet of bikini-wearing beauties. Sure, his new coach gets under his skin with his cocky ‘I was a Premier League player’ attitude, and sometimes Bailey gets homesick, but these are minor issues he can deal with.

Except it turns out his coach is struggling behind the scenes, and that changes things.

English expat and former pro-football player August (AJ) Jacobs is floundering. Having aged out of the career he loved, he’s just moved to Australia to start a new job coaching. Unfortunately, the Captain of his team hates him, and the hot weather on the Gold Coast is unbearable. Then life throws him another curveball in the shape of a six-year-old daughter he hadn’t known existed and it’s all in time for an ungodly humid Christmas, too. A Christmas he now must make child friendly, when he’d planned on drinking and wallowing in loneliness.


Heather's Review:

This book was a lovely, low angst surprise for my holiday reading... whether you call it soccer or football, these two men may be coach/player on the field, but off the pitch they become good friends and more as Bailey adopts AJ and his fresh from England surprise daughter for the holidays!  It's lovely to see an Aussie holiday book with all the hot sun, beaches and traditions that come along with it and also to see two men who belong together find a way of making their family wonderful.  It's a quick read that will definitely put you in the holiday spirit and may even teach the non-Aussie readers a bit of slang from Down Under.


A Surprise for the Holidays is currently available as an e-book and paperback and can be read as part of your Kindle Unlimited Subscription