Christmas Camp

by Karen Schaler

HarperCollins | Amazon | B&N

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

From the screenwriter of the Netflix Original viral hit, A Christmas Prince, comes another heartwarming holiday story about a beautiful Grinch who’s determined to get her dream job even if it means spending a week at a Christmas Camp where she discovers an unexpected love.

Haley Hanson’s idea of the perfect Christmas is escaping to the Caribbean to work so she can avoid all the traditional Christmas distractions. Over the years, she’s sacrificed her personal life to climb the corporate ladder at a prestigious Boston advertising agency. Now she just needs to land a coveted Christmas toy company account to make partner. But first, her boss, Larry, thinks she needs a holiday attitude adjustment, so he ships her off to a Christmas Camp at Holly Peak Inn to help her find her Christmas spirit.

Arriving at the charming mountainside inn, Haley meets the owner’s handsome son, Jeff, and feels an instant spark, but resists the attraction, refusing to be distracted from her goal of doing all the required Christmas tasks as fast as possible so she can get back to work.

At first, Haley struggles with all the traditional Christmas Camp activities. It’s not until she finally allows herself to slow down, live in the moment, and let Christmas back into her heart, that she begins to grow closer to Jeff. But when he finds out Haley’s come up with a plan to help his dad save the struggling inn while he’s been trying to convince his dad to sell it, their relationship takes a serious holiday hit. Now it will take the magic of the season to bring these two hearts together.

My Rating:

Favorite Quote:

Since she traveled a lot to visit her clients, she took pride in the fact that she never checked any bags, going with the philosophy that there were two kinds of luggage, carry-on and lost.

My Review:

I enjoyed this mild and sweet holiday storyline of a female workaholic named Haley. The writing was insightful and finely tweaked with those humorous and thoughtful touches that kicked the narrative up from good to cleverly exceptional. The main character of Haley wasn’t exactly a grinch but a mild female version of Scrooge.   She was exceptionally driven and prone to be selfish and thoughtless in what she said and did in her eagerness to get accounts and make partner. She worked all the time and didn’t make time to relax, date, or socialize outside of work.   She wasn’t vile, just obnoxiously ambitious and work-obsessed. Her boss staged a covet intervention as “a holiday attitude adjustment,” by sending her to “Christmas Camp,” an inn with traditional activities geared to bring families together during the holidays. This is one of those rare books that is chaste enough for my elderly mother’s Sunday School book club and Hallmark Channel wholesome, yet still entertaining to me. My favorite character in the story was the exceptionally clever Max – the Wonder Dog, whom I believe was largely responsible for Haley’s transformation.  I was provided with a review copy of this sweet tale by   HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours. 

About Karen Schaler

Karen Schaler is a three-time Emmy Award-winning storyteller, author, screenwriter, journalist and national TV host. She has written original screenplays for Netflix and Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies. Her travels to more than sixty-five countries as the creator and host of Travel Therapy TV inspired Christmas Camp. All of Karen’s stories are uplifting, filled with heart and hope.

Find out more about Karen at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

A Christmas Date

by Camilla Isley

Amazon US  /   UK  /  Amazon Geo-linked  

iBooks  /  B&N  / Kobo / Google Play 

No one wants to be single at the holidays.

Even Little Miss Grinch, Nikki, a successful and independent woman, must face her bachelorette status at the most horrible time of the year.

December is her personal version of holly-jolly hell: a merry torture made of couples kissing at every corner, forced vacation days, and an inescapable family reunion.

And when her baby sister announces she’s engaged—to Paul, the man Nikki is secretly in love with—and that he’s spending the holidays with them, Christmas starts looking bluer than ever.

Nikki can’t possibly survive an entire week trapped home as the family’s spinster. But she has no time to meet men or to try the newest dating app, she’s too busy working as a video producer for an advertising agency.

So what’s a girl to do?

Nikki has the perfect solution: to hire a fake boyfriend.

Luckily, her job gives her access to an endless catalog of gorgeous actors to choose from.

But Nikki will soon discover that keeping business and pleasure from mixing isn’t so easy and that she might not be immune to a little mistletoe magic. Especially not when she picked out the perfect man as her Christmas date…

A fun, festive romantic comedy with lots of bad behavior and Christmas spirit. Like a creamy hot chocolate with marshmallows, you won’t want to put this deliciously hilarious novel down. Perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella, Sally Thorne, and Jo Watson.

First Comes Love is a series of interconnected romantic novels. However, each book in the series can be read as a standalone.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Oh, come on… You sleep in the candy shop every night, and you want me to believe you’ve never thought of tasting the candies?

If Diego was a real boyfriend, and not one paid to endure my family, I’d be dying of shame at their ill-concealed eagerness. Mom and Julia look like wolfhounds with the scent of a bone fresh in their nostrils.

“Your mom and your old crone of an aunt always complain you’re never going to find a man. But I told them how wrong they were, and bet Dora a pie you’d be married before forty, which is the new thirty.”… I’m not sure what makes me angrier: the fact that my mom openly discusses my dating life with the whole town; or that, apparently, the prize of my happiness is a pumpkin pie.

 “…that doesn’t justify her calling me fat and old. She’s so petty.” “I don’t remember Julia calling you fat or old.” “But she did, in female code language.” “You girls have a secret language?” “All gals do; it’s Bitchenglish.”

My Review:

My first exposure to the witty comedic style of Camilla Isley and I am an instant fangirl. I smirked my way through this lively and clever tale that sure, it has been done before, but this version was much more fun. While they may have been adults, sleeping in their childhood beds seemed to harken them back to their surly teen and childish whining behaviors. The characters were competitive, stressed to a toxic level, and nearing the obnoxious register on the pettiness scale with life-long sibling rivalries reaching a scalding level. But what family holiday gathering isn’t complete without several meltdowns and a messy food skirmish? It’s not even Halloween yet and I’m already in the Christmas spirit and dreaming of the heavily laden table – bring on the pie.

Author Bio –

Camilla is an engineer turned writer after she quit her job to follow her husband on an adventure abroad.

She’s a cat lover, coffee addict, and shoe hoarder. Besides writing, she loves reading—duh!—cooking, watching bad TV, and going to the movies—popcorn, please. She’s a bit of a foodie, nothing too serious. A keen traveler, Camilla knows mosquitoes play a role in the ecosystem, and she doesn’t want to starve all those frog princes out there, but she could really live without them.

Social Media Links –

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

Twitter https://twitter.com/camillaisley

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14135080.Camilla_Isley

Bookbub https://www.bookbub.com/authors/camilla-isley

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/camillaisley/

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/camillaisley/

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I’m a noble kinda guy… My sisters used to joke that I have a lousy sense of direction because my brain’s entire navigational system is made up of moral compass.

One second I’m standing there talking with him about the finer points of sunset dining, and the next second I’m polishing his tonsils with my tongue. I don’t know what happened.

I laugh at the idea of my mother having a job. “She marries rich men with commitment issues, then takes them to the cleaners when they cheat.”

I hold my breath like a teenager watching his first skin flick, praying someone doesn’t show up and change the channel.

My Review:

Going by the title and cover shot you would expect this book to be corny erotica – wrong. It was actually a cleverly amusing and sweet romance with thoughtful and sensitive storylines and some extra fun and spicy bits as a bonus. I adored these endearing and smirk-worthy characters.   Written in my favorite dual POV, I was enamored and fully engaged from start to finish. I dove into the series at book three with no difficulties following the plot, although I covet more time with the other characters and am scheming to find a time machine or just possibly revamp my calendar to include extra days so I can read the earlier installments, as well as every other book this crafty wordsmith has cranked out. But I’m greedy like that when I stumble upon treasure. I wants them all!

Goodreads

When Tawna Fenske finished her English lit degree at 22, she celebrated by filling a giant trash bag full of romance novels and dragging it everywhere until she’d read them all. Now she’s a RITA-nominated, USA Today bestselling author who writes humorous fiction, risqué romance, and heartwarming love stories with a quirky twist. Publishers Weekly has praised Tawna’s offbeat romances with multiple starred reviews and noted, “There’s something wonderfully relaxing about being immersed in a story filled with over-the-top characters in undeniably relatable situations. Heartache and humor go hand in hand.”

Tawna lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, stepkids, and a menagerie of ill-behaved pets. She loves hiking, snowshoeing, standup paddleboarding, and inventing excuses to sip wine on her back porch. She can peel a banana with her toes and loses an average of twenty pairs of eyeglasses per year. To find out more about Tawna and her books, visit www.tawnafenske.com.

Painting Blue Water

by Leigh Fossan

Amazon US / UK / CA /  AU 

Barnes & Noble

Katherine Ross, a struggling artist-turned-successful-businesswoman, has a life many would envy. At only thirty-one years old, Katherine runs one of the top luxury real-estate firms in Manhattan, and she lives in a fabulous loft with her dreamy husband. That is, of course, until her marriage comes to a screeching halt, forcing Katherine to face the truths she’s been burying deep within her heart. She hasn’t been happy for a long time. And her life, while glamorous, is not the life she ever wanted.

Fighting through the fog of her confusion and pain, Katherine makes the daring, or possibly insane choice to start over somewhere new. She leaves her business, her friends, and the city behind, while she ventures alone to the mountains in hopes of rediscovering her artistic roots in a place surrounded by beauty, peace, and quiet.

But life in Bluewater isn’t as simple as it may seem, and when her art career suddenly begins to take off in this unlikely setting, Katherine finds herself torn between two worlds. Does she pursue her lifelong dream and become the world-famous artist she always wanted to be? Or does she open her heart to the possibility of new dreams and a life she never imagined?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

As a kid, she’d fallen in love with the mountains. She found them gloriously exotic—colossal piles of earth and trees reaching higher than the empire state building. She had imagined that the dinosaurs must be buried beneath them. That, of course, was the only way to explain their massive size.

Oh my God, are you going to turn into one of those mountain people who don’t shave their legs or armpits and who, like, hunt for their food?!

Scattered thoughts would dance in her head and team up with the heartburn, teasing her. She felt like she was on a long trip and forgot to pack something very important or like she was nearing the end of a crucial semester at school only to realize she had missed several classes and would fail her exams.

My Review:

Painting Blue Water was a slowly developed character-driven story of healing and personal growth. It was lavishly detailed with vibrant and evocatively described scenes that smoothly scrolled through my cranium as if my gray matter were a movie screen.   The main character of Katherine was an anxious little bird with a trunk load of personal insecurities, an inability to speak up for herself, and an acid stomach as a bonus. Wishing to start her life anew and leave her humiliating failure of a marriage behind, she uproots herself across the country to a beautiful vacation spot that was a happy memory from her childhood, with the intent to hopefully find herself again and reawaken her love of painting.   I have no artistic abilities whatsoever and envied Katherine’s talents, but more so, I coveted her ability to completely lose herself in her art. The cast of characters was large, endearing, and small-town quirky, but my favorite was not the main character of Katherine but Eli Trust, the spry and precious octogenarian inn owner. I adored him.

Author Bio –

Painting Blue Water is the debut novel for Leigh Fossan. A creative soul at heart, Leigh grew up with a paintbrush in her hand and went on to study the arts in Florence, Italy. While abroad, Leigh was one of the few recipients of the Coluccio Salutati Award for Creative Writing. Today, Leigh is a professional artist and her paintings are collected around the world. She lives in Colorado with her artist husband, and their young daughter, who wants to be a scientist.

You can see Leigh’s paintings at www.lavfineart.com

Social Media Links –

WEBSITE: https://www.leighfossanauthor.com/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/leighfossanauthor/

INSTAGRAM: @leighfossanauthor

TWITTER: @LeighFossan

No One Cancels Christmas

by Zara Stoneley

Amazon UK / US / B&N

It’s the most magical time of the year, and for travel agent Sarah it’s also the busiest! But this year one man threatens to ruin Christmas for Sarah’s customers – Mr. Grinch, Will Armstrong.

The Shooting Star Mountain resort is a magical place, and Sarah has fond memories of Christmas here as a little girl – visits to Father Christmas, husky rides in the snow and hot chocolate by a roaring fire. But as the resorts new owner, Will refuses to play snowball or to deck the halls with anything remotely resembling tinsel!

With customers complaining their Christmas is ruined, Sarah decides it’s up to her to convince Scroogey Will just how magical Christmas can be….

But getting Will into the Christmas spirit is hopeless – he is Bah Humbug personified! But as Sarah gets to know him better, she realizes that underneath all the gloom is a man struggling with a pain of his own.

With the big day approaching, Sarah realizes that the magic and sparkle can wait. This year, she’s going to spend Christmas day with someone special her very own Mr. Scrooge…

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I try and blow the crumbs out of the keyboard. The letter ‘T’ is already a bit dodgy; if this ruins W and A I’ll have lost one of my favourite words.

She had Dad on his bike, towing her through the park on her skies every night. It was so embarrassing. Then at the fete, she cannoned out of control into the cake and homemade jam stall and ended up looking like a murder victim.

She is about two feet taller than me, and she has boobs. At a guess, they’re surgically enhanced, because I am absolutely positive that gravity would have a firm handle on anything that big. If it can cope with an apple, these wouldn’t stand a chance.

My Review:

Sharing several of the same characters and following in timeline to Wedding Date, this tale also showcases Ms. Stoneley’s clever wit and penchant for observant and insightful storytelling. The storylines were entertaining, thoughtfully written, and well-balanced between heart-squeezing family drama and angst, and smirk-inducing levity. My favorite character among the cast continues to be the colorful and confident Ruth, although Aunt Lynn has also earned my utmost respect for her enviable cougar style and skills. I am eager to see what Ms. Stoneley comes up with next.

Author Bio 

Born in a small village in Staffordshire, I wanted to be a female James Herriot, a spy, or an author when I grew up. After many years, and many different jobs, my dream of writing a bestseller came true. 

I write about friendship, dreams, love, and happy ever afters, and hope that my tales make you cry a little, laugh a lot, and occasionally say ‘ahhh’.

I now live in a Cheshire village with my family, a lively cockapoo called Harry, and a very bossy (and slightly evil) cat called Saffron.

Where you can find her-

Website: http://www.zarastoneley.com
Twitter: @ZaraStoneley
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZaraStoneley 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zarastoneley/

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners

by Gretchen Anthony

Amazon | Books-A-Million | B & N

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: Park Row; Original edition (October 16, 2018)

A formidable matriarch learns the hard way that no family is perfect in this witty, sparkling debut novel

Dearest loved ones, far and near—evergreen tidings from the Baumgartners!

Violet Baumgartner has opened her annual holiday letter the same way for the past three decades. And this year she’s going to throw her husband, Ed, a truly perfect retirement party, one worthy of memorializing in her upcoming letter. But the event becomes a disaster when, in front of two hundred guests, Violet learns her daughter Cerise has been keeping a shocking secret from her, shattering Violet’s carefully constructed world.

In an epic battle of wills, Violet goes to increasing lengths to wrest back control of her family, infuriating Cerise and snaring their family and friends in a very un-Midwestern, un-Baumgartner gyre of dramatics. And there will be no explaining away the consequences in this year’s Baumgartner holiday letter…

Full of humor, emotion and surprises at every turn, Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners brings to life a remarkable cast of quirky, deeply human characters who must learn to adapt to the unconventional, or else risk losing one another. This is the story of a family falling to pieces—and the unexpected way they put it all back together.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Barb was steeped in the classics, but the only literary references Cerise knew came from the mandatory hours spent next to her mother watching Masterpiece Theatre on PBS. All that time invested and the only things she had to show for it were a decent British accent and a canny ability to let her thoughts wander behind open eyes.

If the Hesse family were birds, we’d be California condors… No, members of the vulture family and nearly extinct.

He watched as his soon-to-be-former boss, a toad of a guy who kept his dermatologist busy with retinol treatments and mole removal, straightened the pin tethering his Dolce & Gabbana tie to his Burberry shirt… I hope you croak, Richard wanted to say. I hear that’s what toads do.

My Review:

I loved this book from the start and was soon smirking as I relished the smartly written and clever humor, which quickly led to giggle-snorting and then on to full-on laughing aloud, which occurred several times before I finished. I adored the full slate of fascinatingly quirky and odd characters, but the winner, by far, of the most expertly crafted and deftly depicted character sweepstakes was the petty, shallow, and highly manipulative Violet. Violet was a meddlesome helicopter parent who was ridiculously intrusive, arrogant, judgmental, and an exacting perfectionist with everything she did, whether it was controlling the various committees she spearheaded or in keeping her home surgically clean. Violet’s to-do list was never-ending as she was constantly scheming and often had several going at once, although in her rationalizations it was always for the betterment of her family; her inner musings were comedic gold and highly entertaining. The storylines were ingenious and highly eventful while the writing was laced with insightful observations and packed with lip twitching levity. I couldn’t put my Kindle down, as I couldn’t wait to see what outrageous situation would pop-up next. I was stunned and awed to realize this was the author’s debut; it was a delight to read and a treasure to have discovered. Gretchen Anthony is definitely one to watch and has a new fangirl.

This was chosen for my Review of the Month for the review collection on LovelyAudiobooks.info

About Gretchen Anthony

Gretchen Anthony is a Minnesota-based writer and humorist whose work has been featured on scarymommy.com, medium.com and thewritelife.com. She’s also spent decades as a ghostwriter and has written for some of the best personal brands in the United States, from CEOs to doctors and start-up superstars to BBQ pros. Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners is her first novel.

Connect with Gretchen

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