Mistletoe matchmaking season is revving up with more weddings and Santa visits. Just when the townspeople think they’ve seen it all, the matchmaking families, the Deans and the Wilsons, have another surprise in their stockings.
Austin Wilson has loved his best-friend Samantha since the first time he saw her sparkling eyes, but she’s kept him at arm’s length.
When Austin decides it’s time to … it’s time to move on, Samantha has the opportunity to see him with another woman.
And she doesn’t like it.
Forced to see Austin as more than a friend, Samantha suddenly realizes she can’t lose him to anyone else. She needs him and that scares her.
Desperate to get his attention, Samantha offers to take Austin on a tour of a property where they end up getting stranded together. Their true feelings come out, but it is it too late?
Austin’s girlfriend is coming to town and Austin has to decide if he wants to take a chance on a friendship he wouldn’t trade for anything in the world or a woman who never stuck him in the friend zone. Samantha has to accept his decision, even if it means losing the only man she’s ever been able to rely on.
Other Titles by Bonnie R. Paulson
Matched with her Cowboy Billionaire Ex Fiance
Matched with her Cowboy Billionaire Fake Husband
Matched wtih her Cowboy Billionaire Best Friend
Look for more in the Clearwater County universe!
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I loved this book. A matchmaker couldn’t even find a match for himself. You think the characters are going to just carry on, but this book moves you into fighting for the underdog. Wonderful story line. Well written. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a confusing love story that ends perfectly.
The closeness of the Wilson family is one worth coveting. However, I don’t think I would want to go through the challenges that they faced. Austin at first seems to be a real nice guy but to me it seemed he blamed his inability to be with Samantha solely on her for not reciprocating his feelings. How in the heck can she do that if he never told her how he felt until it was almost too late? Everyone around them knew they were good for each other. Why in the heck did they not say anything? Well, Elizabeth did say something but it was almost too late. And then to top it all off, Austin presumptively went and set everything up without even consulting Samantha before hand! I loved it! This story was so agonizing it was great to watch it all happening at a slow burn rate. I kept rooting for Austin and Samantha all the way and when it finally happened I threw my fist in the air and yelled YESSSS! Ms Paulson truly knows how to keep the tension thick with little baby step goodies enough to keep you glued to the pages.
I loved reading Samantha (“Sam”) and Austin’s story. Best friends almost their entire life, never letting each other on how they feel. Sam has her on again, off again, beau. Austin has a girl that he has been on a date with, does not live anywhere near him, but has been talking to over the phone for six months. None of his family knows about her but he does invite her to come to his town so that she can be properly introduced. When Sam invites Austin for a weekend in a cabin, a weekend that was supposed to be for her and her boyfriend, things change. Will professing their true feelings change anything? A great read in this Mistletoe Matchmakers of Clearwater County series. Loved it and cannot wait to read about Kali and Flynne.
A well written perfectly paced story pulling you in from the start. This is book three in the series and is a standalone read but still about the Wilson and Dean families. This one is about Austin and Sam and the friendship they have developed since they were younger. Love these matchmaking stories that are all different but all great reads.
This was such a convoluted tangle with Austin and his (phone) girlfriend Jessee, Samantha, and her (lying, no-good sleazeball) ex-boyfriend, the lifelong best friends relationship between Austin and Samantha, and possibly most importantly the total obliviousness of Samantha as to what her real feelings were in regards to Austin. I went through a good fifty percent of the book vacillating between thinking Samantha was immature and selfish and then feeling sorry for her and wanting her to be able to work everything out between herself and Austin. Jessee was another one I had a hard time getting a true fix on, other than the fact I was immediately put off by her before she even made it to town for her visit with Austin. Once she arrived she went back and forth by being vain, nasty, and downright rude, and then switching her personality to superficially nice and mild-mannered and finally back to her true self of spoiled, self-centered, and immature. Austin, on the other hand, had been in love with Samantha all of his life and for some reason had never attempted to move their relationship past the friends-only stage. When he makes the attempt to move on by developing something of a relationship with Jessee, Samantha finally wakes up to the realization that she is no longer going to be the priority in his life and starts to question her real feelings for him.
It is a true indication of the talent that Ms. Paulson has for creating a storyline that a reader can become so completely engrossed in that the emotion each character is experiencing is felt by the reader also. I could empathize with the confusion Samantha was feeling as she tried to determine whether she actually loved Austin as more than a friend and Austin’s despair in thinking that Samantha would never look past their friendship and see him as a desirable man, so he deemed it time to look elsewhere for someone to build a family with.
Thankfully Jessee flounces off in a huff and disappears back to where she came from and Samantha and Austin do manage to work out their differences and get that HEA they wanted. While the ending was extremely romantic I couldn’t help feeling that it all came together a little too easily and therefore, was a tad rushed. An epilogue allowing us to see them a short while after the I-Do’s would have rounded everything out nicely and given us a true feeling of completion to their story. It was so great to have the couples from the earlier books in the series have their own small side-stories that let us follow how they have been doing. My heart just ached for Lily and Brock and the teaser for Flynne and Kari has me eagerly waiting for their story!
I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader copy of this book.
WOW! I was really excited to read Bonnie Paulson 3rd book Matched With The Cowboy Billionaire Best-Friend in the Mistletoe Matchmaker series. This was the first book of the series that I read which was about Austin and Sam having been best friends since childhood and where Austin who has always loved Sam but their relationship has always been in the friends zone. This story is heartwarming, sweet, funny with twists and turns. I totally loved reading Matched With The Cowboy Billionaire Best-Friend about the Deans and Wilson families of match makers that I bought the first two books in the series. I highly recommend reading this book! I received this book as an arc for an honest review of it.
I loved this story of Austin and Sam, it’s a BFF to lovers’ genre. It took him finally giving up on her ever see him more than a friend and a girlfriend, for her to finally see him. Is it too late? This story includes the wonderful characters of the Deans and Wilsons, matchmakers, the continuity is excellent and well developed. I look forward to Flynn’s story.
I would recommend this story and the series.
I think the best way I can sum up this story is to say this: Have you ever watched an event happen (the standard saying is ‘train wreck’), you and the rest of the world stand there and think to yourself: “Can they not see what is happening???” In a good way, of course. Austin and Samantha have been best friends all their lives but there is an underlying attraction between them that they have never acknowledged, out loud anyway. Austin has been in love with his best friend for years – what he claims was from when he was five years old – but has never said anything.
We’ve met these characters before, in previous books, but since this is their story, we get to jump right into their lives. For me, both of them were a wee bit self-focused (not self-centered) but as life events unfold, they start to see what the other residents of Mistletoe know…they belong together.
I really enjoyed this book and felt my own angst reading their path to an HEA. It is a good, clean read with the kind of sometimes snarky romance that I love. It was fun to read Sam’s and Austin’s struggle to figure out what they most want in this world and visiting with “family” members/previous characters was the best.
Another match in Mistletoe! I loved this trip back to Mistletoe and the competing match making families. Both families know that Austin and Samantha are a perfect match. But they are best friends since childhood and can’t seem to realize that their love is more than platonic until it is almost too late. You almost want to tell them to just get out of the way and let it happen! I love the humor and close knit family interactions in this series! Don’t miss this delightful new read from Bonnie Paulson!
Samantha and Austin are best friends. He loved her for as long as he remembers, she thinks of him as a best friend, till they go and spend weekend together. What she has to do to win Austin, especially now, that his long distance girlfriend is coming over to see him.
I enjoyed this story very much.