The Christmas Wishing Tree

(Eternity Springs #15)

by Emily March

Goodreads

Buy Links:

Macmillan / Amazon

Barnes & Noble / Books-a-Million

Indie Bound / Powells

Sometimes life’s most magical journeys bring you back to where it all began…From USA Today bestselling author Emily March comes The Christmas Wishing Tree, an enchanting account of the magic and miracle of Christmas.

A man who loves adventure and the open sea, Devin Murphy returns for a short Christmas trip to his small hometown of Eternity Springs. Immersed in the joy and magic of the holiday season all around him, he doesn’t hesitate to play along when a young boy phones Santa to ask for a very special wish. Devin never guesses that a wrong number has the potential to make everything in his life so right.

Jenna Stockton adopted Reilly when he needed a mother and she intends to keep him safe. A small town across the country called Eternity Springs seems like a good place to hide from their past without any complications —until sexy Santa himself discovers her secrets. When Devin proposes a daring plan to face down the danger together and defeat it once and for all, she is tempted. Maybe Devin really is capable of making wishes come true? Perhaps in a Christmas wish they’ll both find the miracle they’ve been looking for all along…

A delightful Christmas novel in the New York Times bestselling Eternity Springs series.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Her son could be a terrier when he got an idea in his head, and lately, every time she turned around, he’d been yipping and yapping about needing a daddy. How about I just order one online?

Those are really big antlers.” “They’re called a rack,” Michael informed Reilly. “My brother Devin says guys really like big racks.” Jenna made a strangled noise in her throat.

I choose to live my vision, not my circumstance.

Devin didn’t dream about finding The One. His MO was The Many. He liked having a harem, to use his father’s term.

If Cam dyes his hair and starts wearing turtlenecks, I’ll lose my mind.

My Review:

Although it is not primarily a holiday story as the events span more than a year, this was a sweet, light, and effortless read and a gentle way to ease into the season. The premise was original with several active and engaging storylines of light suspense and contemporary romance. I don’t recall many books were all of the primary and secondary characters were as considerate and likable as those inhabiting this unusually relaxed and accommodating small town. The writing was well-paced, easy to follow, and pleasantly amusing.

Author Bio:

Emily March is the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestselling author of over thirty novels, including the critically acclaimed Eternity Springs series. Publishers Weekly calls March a “master of delightful banter,” and her heartwarming, emotionally charged stories have been named to Best of the Year lists by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Romance Writers of America. A graduate of Texas A&M University, Emily is an avid fan of Aggie sports and her recipe for jalapeño relish has made her a tailgating legend.

Social Links:

Emily March Website

Twitter: @EmilyMarchBooks

Facebook: Emily March

Pinterest: Emily March

Haircuts, Hens, and Homicide

by Stephanie Dagg

Goodreads

Amazon / B&N

Megan finds mayhem when she arrives in France to bury her Gran and sort out her affairs. She expected difficult encounters with civil servants and red tape but not with wandering chickens, an imperious policeman, and a dead body. Together with her unlikely new friend, the elderly and grumpy Alphonse and his canine equivalent, Monsieur Moustache, Megan becomes involved in investigating the fowl-related foul play that’s at work in this sleepy part of rural France.
She’s helped but mainly hindered by the people she comes across. These include the local mayor, who wants Megan to stay and set up a hair salon in his village to help keep it alive. There are the cousins Romain, the gendarme, and Nico, the clumsy but hunky farmer. They have always clashed, but do so constantly now that Megan is on the scene. Michelle, Romain’s terrifying ex who wants him back, appears along the way, as does Claudette, a wheelchair-bound old lady, and Kayla, Megan’s best friend, who is hugely pregnant but not above taking on the forces of French law and order when Megan finds herself the prime suspect after Alphonse is stabbed.

There’s excitement, humor and lots of ruffled feathers in this rom-com slash cozy mystery, the first in a projected series.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

The first time I’d visited Gran in France I’d expected to see the entire male population wearing berets. My school textbooks had been resolute on the matter.

I didn’t know French women cried. I thought they only had one emotional setting: ferocity. Mind you, looking back I’d always been in Gran’s company when I’d met any French women and she had the knack of bringing that quality out in everyone.

There were a good few words I’d never heard before. I made a mental note to look them up later. You could never have too many swear words at your disposal in any language.

I’d become a good judge of what people were saying without actually listening. I mean, there’s only so many long rambling tales of child prodigies, cute cats and cheating boyfriends you can listen to without wanting to stick your scissors in your eye.

“I’ve always been attracted to older men,” Claudette went on, “so each of my men was twenty years old than me. Hans was ninety-four when we shacked up.” I fought desperately to keep my face blank, but ‘ninety-four’ and ‘shacked up’ are so not words you expect to hear in the same sentence. “I finished him off in four years,” was Claudette’s next deadpan remark.

Jason had been a slim guy so didn’t slim just represent the first four letters of slimy, after all?

Now for all I knew, my father might own a string of racehorses or a fleet of oil tankers or even a small Caribbean island, maybe several. Nah, it was far more likely he owned a beer belly, a clapped-out car and a pile of debt.

My Review:

This wittily amusing book was a delight from start to finish. Ms. Dagg’s writing sparkled with more twinkles than my friend Nikki’s disco ball. The lively storylines were cleverly crafted and just so much fun. I adored all the quirky and colorful characters, vibrantly detailed and glee-inducing escapades, the nimbly plotted chicken napping murder mysteries, and hilarious inner musings and insightful observations of the main character of Megan.

After the humorously whimsical Megan, my second favorite character was Nico, who despite his appeal and sweet nature, was a walking hazard and unwittingly wrought destruction and injury to any unfortunate object, person, or creature within his reach. The storylines were laced with all manner of clever little tidbits and lovable antics such as Catastrophe – the “little scabby tabby;” the duck that thought she was a chicken and avoided the duck pond; and the ancient kleptomaniac chicken expert Megan privately labeled “Chikipedia” and his ugly dog with the precious name of Monsieur Moustache.   The hardest part of writing this review was winnowing down the many pages of mirthfully rib-tickling favorite quotes I had marked. This was my first exposure to Ms. Dagg’s deft literary artistry and it left me with a greedy want of all her clever words.

Author Bio –

I’m an English expat living in France, having moved here with my family in 2006 after fourteen years as an expat in Ireland. I now consider myself a European rather than ‘belonging’ to any particular country. The last ten years have been interesting, to put it mildly. Taking on seventy-five acres with three lakes, two hovels and one cathedral-sized barn, not to mention an ever-increasing menagerie, makes for exciting times. The current array of animals includes alpacas, llamas, huarizos (alpaca-llama crossbreds, unintended in our case and all of them thanks to one very determined alpaca male), sheep, goats, pigs, ducks, geese, chickens and turkeys, not forgetting our pets of dogs, cats, zebra finches, budgies , canaries, lovebirds and Chinese quail. Before we came to France all we had was a dog and two chickens, so it’s been a steep learning curve. I recount these experiences in my book Heads Above Water: Staying Afloat in France and the sequel to that, Total Immersion: Ten Years in France. I also blog regularly at www.bloginfrance.com.

I’m married to Chris and we have three bilingual TCKs (third culture kids) who are resilient and resourceful and generally wonderful.     

I’m a traditionally-published author of many children’s books, and am now self-publishing too. I have worked part-time as a freelance editor for thirty years after starting out as a desk editor for Hodder & Stoughton. Find me at www.editing.zone. The rest of the time I’m running carp fishing lakes with Chris and inevitably cleaning up some or other animal’s poop.   

Social Media Links – @llamamum

www.facebook.com/StephanieDaggBooks/

www.bloginfrance.com

The Ancient Nine

by Ian K. Smith

Goodreads

Buy Links:

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powells

Books-a-Million / IndieBound

Summary:

Spenser Collins
An unlikely Harvard prospect, smart and athletic, strapped for cash, determined to succeed. Calls his mother—who raised him on her own in Chicago—every week.

Dalton Winthrop
A white-shoe legacy at Harvard, he’s just the most recent in a string of moneyed, privileged Winthrop men in Cambridge. He’s got the ease—and the deep knowledge—that come from belonging.

These two find enough common ground to become friends, cementing their bond when Spenser is “punched” to join the Delphic Club, one of the most exclusive of Harvard’s famous all-male final clubs. Founded in the nineteenth century, the Delphic has had titans of industry, Hollywood legends, heads of state, and power brokers among its members.

Dalton Winthrop knows firsthand that the Delphic doesn’t offer memberships to just anyone. His great-uncle is one of their oldest living members, and Dalton grew up on stories of the club’s rituals. But why is his uncle so cryptic about the Ancient Nine, a shadowy group of alums whose identities are unknown and whose power is absolute? They protect the Delphic’s darkest and oldest secrets—including what happened to a student who sneaked into the club’s stately brick mansion in 1927 and was never seen again.

Dalton steers Spenser into deeper and deeper recesses of the club, and beyond it, to try to make sense of what they think they may be seeing. But with each scrap of information they get from an octogenarian Crimson graduate, a crumbling newspaper in the library’s archives, or one of Harvard’s most famous and heavily guarded historical books, a fresh complication trips them up. The more the friends investigate, the more questions they unearth, tangling the story of the club, the disappearance, and the Ancient Nine, until they realize their own lives are in danger.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I rarely felt self-conscious about what I did or didn’t have, but it wasn’t lost on me that my competitors for a coveted membership were arriving in expensive foreign cars while I arrived in a pair of sturdy five-year-old Florsheims that had been resoled four times and polished so much, the white stitching had turned black.

The racial politics at Harvard were complicated. Black students were in a tough position. If we spent too much time with white students, other blacks figured we had sold out. If we spent too much time with other black students, our white classmates figured we were angry separatists. The dining hall was one big murky fishbowl of social complexities. Everyone looked to see who was sitting with whom and how much time they spent interacting on the “other” side. I was lucky because playing a sport gave me a pass that the non-athletes didn’t have. By dint of my team and training obligations, I automatically spent time with both blacks and whites, which gave me immunity.

He had heavy bags under his eyes, as if miniature pillows had been slipped under his skin. He was military stocky and wore a pair of jeans that looked tight enough to constipate him.

Her T-shirt had j-u-i-c-y spread across it in small crystals, and the fabric was under so much tension, I thought the I was going to pop off and hit me in the face.

There were two things about Professor Charles Davenport that you’d never forget. He probably had the biggest ears of any man that’s walked the face of the earth, long doughy flaps that fell beneath his jawline with a forest of hair growing out of them. Then there were those glasses, big and black and rectangular, made all the more prominent by his hairless dome.

She had an uncanny ability to quickly put things into perspective and make molehills out of mountains.

Many people never even bothered leaving the tailgates, and most of those who did only entered the stadium at halftime, when their champagne had run dry or their canisters of caviar were empty. This crowd even cheered differently. They didn’t yell and clap like most football fans. Rather they spoke complete, grammatically correct sentences, saying things like, “What a magnificent play!” and “Thrash them, Harvard!” Sometimes it was difficult to tell if they were watching a football game or croquet match.

When the Harvard side of the stadium rose in unison, it was not to clap, but to jingle car keys in a massive show of approval. I watched in awe as thousands of Jaguar, Mercedes, and Rolls-Royce keys dangled in the air…

Money has an insidious way of making decent human beings behave in a most indecent way.

My Review:

I wasn’t prepared for the complexity of this intriguing read and held on through a complicated and intricately woven tale with multiple yet equally compelling storylines. I pictured a handsome future President of recent history as the main character and it was a near perfect fit. There were compounded secrets within secrets and an endless and tantalizing quagmire to unravel. The writing was insightfully observant and sumptuously detailed. I reveled in Dr. Smith’s vividly colorful and amusing descriptions and looked forward to the introductions of each new character and locale. His premise pricked my curiosity and his well-crafted storylines kept it well fed while consistently pulling me in deeper and deeper into the group’s knotty and clandestine vortex. Like an iceberg, little was as it appeared to the eye. The characters were oddly unique and quirky, even the sinister ones held my interest and left me thirsting for more. The ending was highly satisfying with Spenser’s achieved results being better than expected and left a contented smile on my face.

Author Bio:

Ian K. Smith is the author of nine New York Times bestselling nonfiction books, several of them, including Shred and Super Shred, #1 bestsellers, as well as one previous work of fiction, The Blackbird Papers. He is a graduate of Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine.

Social Links:

Facebook: @Dr.IanKSmith

Twitter: @DrIanSmith

Author Website

Instagram: @doctoriansmith

The Oddest Little Cornish Tea Shop

by Beth Good

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK  / B&N

‘I love Beth Good’s quirky style!’ Katie Fforde

It’s a big day for Charlie Bell – the grand reopening of her Aunt Pansy’s long-closed tea rooms in Tremevissey, a quaint Cornish seaside resort. But not everyone is happy for Charlie. The locals say the tea rooms are cursed. For Pansy was cruelly jilted by her lover, and walked out into the ocean, never to return.

Charlie dismisses the ‘curse’ as superstitious nonsense, but by the end of the first day, her world is in tatters, and she’s not even sure the tea rooms can open again.

Then in walks a rugged, taciturn man with a sexy smile and everything he owns on his back, looking for a summer job . . .

Is Gideon Petherick an angel in disguise? Or is history about to repeat itself?

The latest novella in Beth Good’s quirky and popular ‘Oddest Little Shop’ romcom series.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

…‘are you having it off with that total sex god, Gideon Petherick? … Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re too shy to admit it. I’d be telling anyone who’d listen if I’d caught someone like that.’ Elsie wriggled oddly beside her, as though her knickers were too tight and she was trying to adjust them. ‘After all, look at him. It’s not like he isn’t the sexiest beast on two legs in this back-of-beyond village. If I was you, I’d have jumped his bones soon as he walked into my place.’

Elsie fell silent suddenly, then made a kind of strangled moaning noise in the back of her throat. She was staring at Gideon’s rear as he bent over the pool table to take his shot. ‘Christ, will you look at that? I bet that’s a mouth-watering parcel in tight, white cotton boxers… Like two hardboiled eggs in a hanky,’ she finished under her breath.

‘Maybe a little bit handsome,’ she ventured, careful not to let him see how sexy she found him. Even though she had probably given it away once or twice. Okay, definitely twice. ‘Definitely not as hot as Poldark. But you’re … passable. It wouldn’t be a hardship to be seen in public with you, let me put it that way. Especially in a posh car,’ she added shamelessly.

My Review:

I have come to the end of my Beth Good stash and am feeling a bit melancholy and rueful having completed this one as it is the last treat in the bag for me as I’ve now finished all the published installments of the Odd Little Shop series. I enjoyed the curiosity prickling storyline and adored all the colorful characters in this one. Poor Charlie, she had worked so hard to reestablish her family’s business but a string of disasters struck during the Grand Re-Opening the of the Cornish Tea Rooms, mainly due to personnel issues, like grossly incompetent ones. The locals had long claimed the Tea Rooms were cursed, but Charlie didn’t think so. Luckily, all was not lost as a very sexy knight in shining apron named Gideon arrived on her doorstep seeking a job. Gideon had the ladies all a flutter and overheating and caused Charlie to have recurring problems with concentration and breathing.   They worked well together and found their collaboration leading to a different kind of business after-hours, which produced high temperatures in other rooms besides the kitchen.

How unexpected and ingenious for a series to not overlap in some way. I personally believe the divine and sublime Ms. Good should continue this cleverly amusing series into perpetuity, and why not? Cornwall appears to be a treasure trove of quirky villages with which she could continue to apply her own distinct and special blend of witty wares. I have cherished each of her five uniquely appealing and mirthfully entertaining novellas and she has hooked me with her pleasantly addictive style, and like a crack-head on the pipe, I feel rather desolate with the inability to reach for more.

Author Bio –

Born and raised in Essex, England, Beth Good was whisked away to an island tax haven at the age of eleven to attend an exclusive public school and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Sadly, she never became rich or famous herself, so had to settle for infamy as a writer of dubious novels. She writes under several different names, mainly to avoid confusing her readers – and herself! As Beth Good, she writes romantic comedy and feel-good fiction. She also writes thrillers as Jane Holland, historicals as Victoria Lamb and Elizabeth Moss, and feel-good fiction as Hannah Coates.

Beth currently lives in the West Country where she spends a great deal of time thinking romantic thoughts while staring out of her window at sheep. (These two actions are unrelated.)

You can find her most days on Twitter as @BethGoodWriter where she occasionally indulges in pointless banter about chocolate making and the Great British Bake Off. Due to a basic inability to say no, she has too many children and not enough money, which means she needs as many readers as she can get.

Social Media Links –

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BethGoodAuthor

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/BethGoodWriter