Christmas in October:Week Two--A Gift for All Seasons

The first Christmas romances I remember reading were Harlequins. My all-time favorite contemporary Christmas romance, A Carol Christmas (1989) by Muriel Jensen, is a Harlequin American Romance, part of their first Christmas Is for Kids promotion. Each year I eagerly check Harlequins Christmas offerings and almost always find a few to add to my collection of Christmas keepers.

A Gift for All Seasons

By Karen Templeton

Publisher/Imprint: 

Harlequin Special Edition

Release Date: 

October 16, 2012

This is the second book in Templeton’s Summer Sisters series, following September’s The Doctor’s Do-Over.

April Ross, a beautiful, blonde widow with an effervescent spirit, a healthy purse, and a heart three times her size has had the old Victorian house where she and her cousins Melanie Duncan and Blythe Broussard spent their summers with their grandmother renovated and the once-popular Rinehart Inn is scheduled to reopen in mid-December. Before that opening, she has three acres that desperately need the attention of a landscaper. Sam Howell at the garden center recommends Shaughnessy and Sons.

Patrick Shaughnessy, a veteran of the Iraq War, has been working at St. Mary’s best landscaping company with his father and brothers since he recovered from his injuries. His large, loving Irish family provided the stability and security he needed when he came home visibly and invisibly scarred by his war experience. His wife couldn’t handle the changes in him and walked out, leaving the couple’s young daughter with her father. Patrick sees himself as “a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and Dorothy’s Scarecrow,” pieced together by the best efforts of surgeons, burn specialists, physical therapists, and psychologists, but four-year-old Lilianna only sees him as Daddy, and his main purpose in life is to cherish and protect her.

Patrick initially sees April as a beautiful, wealthy ditz. She may stir his slumbering libido, but he’s convinced there’s little substance beneath the appealing surface. But he soon discovers that April is filled with surprises, and she may be just what he needs to bring him fully back to life if he can let go of his fears.

Templeton, who is one of my favorite category writers, says in a letter to her readers that the character of Patrick Shaughnessy was inspired by J. R. Martinez, the former soldier turned actor who was severely burned during his service in Iraq. Templeton was beginning April’s story as Martinez was winning Season 13 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and the idea for her hero was born. Of course, Martinez is eons ahead of Patrick in self-acceptance and the courage to live life. These are the lessons Patrick learns over the course of the book, lessons that his family, Lili, and, most of all, April have to teach him.

April was just a bit too loving and self-sacrificing for me to believe in fully, but her cousins add spice to her sugar and she becomes more assertive. I was rooting for her to have her HEA. Lili is adorable, the Shaughnessys are wonderful, and Patrick is a heart-stealer. A Gift for All Seasons is a sweet Christmas story with lots of family, a kid who believes in Santa, and a sigh-worthy holiday ending that promises happily ever after for two deserving characters.  I can’t ask for more in a Christmas romance. And Book 3 in the series, The Marriage Campaign, Blythe’s story, will be released in February, in plenty of time for a Valentine read.

Among other things, I like family and children in my Christmas reads. What are the ingredients you require in a good Christmas story?

Christmas in October: Week Two--My Kind of Christmas

My Kind of Christmas

By Robyn Carr

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: 

October 23, 2012

Angela LaCroix has been the perfect student, single-minded in her pursuit of academic excellence as a medical student. All that changes when she survives a life-threatening automobile accident. She loves her family, but as the cherished, oldest Sheridan grandchild, she feels stifled by their concern since the accident, especially her mother’s conviction that what Angie needs is to return to med school now that recovery and rehab are behind her. Newly aware of the tenuousness of life and, to her parents’ dismay, uncertain if her future lies in medicine after all, she plans to spend some time in Virgin River, in the cabin where her Aunt Mel lived before she married Angie’s Uncle Jack Sheridan. Angie’s looking forward to spending time with Mel and Jack and her Aunt Brie, to whom she’s always been especially close, but what she most wants is space and time alone to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life. The day after Thanksgiving she arrives in Virgin River.

Patrick Riordan, the youngest of the five Riordan boys, has always been the gentlest, the most stable of the brothers. A Navy pilot, he’s been on track with his life, confident of his future in the Navy. All that changes when he survives a fire fight in Afghanistan that takes the life of his best friend, who left behind a wife and young son for whom Patrick now feels responsible. The Navy has given him six weeks leave to get his head together, but he’s questioning whether he wants to remain in the Navy. He chose to spend his leave at his brother Aiden’s cabin in Virgin River because his brothers are nearby, but he’s skipping the family’s Christmas gathering in San Diego for some solitude in which to reassess his life.

When Angie and Patrick meet in Jack’s Bar, the chemistry is strong and immediate. But Patrick is conscious of the decade’s difference in their ages, and Angie’s Uncle Jack and, to a lesser degree, her Uncle Mike think an older Navy pilot with troubles of his own is not the man their young niece needs in her life. Also, Patrick is convinced that marriage to his friend’s widow is the only way he can keep his promise to his buddy to care for Marie and their toddler son should anything happen to him. Angie’s thinking of ways she can make her life count through service to others. Neither of them is ready for commitment. But they like spending time together, and as the intimacy between them, physical and emotional, grows, they fall for each other heart over head. Angie is wise enough to know what they share is a rare gift, but will stubborn Patrick realize just what he stands to lose if he ignores what his heart is telling him?

My Kind of Christmas is the twentieth book in Carr’s Virgin River series, and her fourth Christmas story set there, and yet each visit to the town offers something new along with the chance to revisit old friends. Angie and Patrick are endearing, engaging characters who deserve a happy ending, and their pairing unites Virgin River’s most beloved families, the Sheridans and the Riordans. Of all the small-town series that fill bookshelves these days, Virgin River remains my favorite. This is a heartwarming addition, one filled with funny moments and teary moments. The lighting of the community Christmas tree again is a stirring occasion.

If you are a Virgin River fan, you’ll welcome this addition to a cherished, long-running series. If you are an off-and-on follower of the series, this is a sweet and sexy addition that you won’t want to miss. If you’ve never been to Virgin River, Christmas 2012 is a great time for your first visit. I loved Angie and Patrick, and I’m already wondering what 2013 holds for Virgin River and its people.

The Virgin River Christmas tree has become a tradition I enjoy vicariously each year along with my own rituals of the season. What are your favorite holiday traditions?

 

Review: His Mistletoe Bride

His Mistletoe Bride

By Vanessa Kelly

Publisher: Zebra Books

Release Date: October 2, 2012

Phoebe Linville has never quite felt as if she really belonged in the New Jersey Quaker community where she has lived since her father’s death with her brother George and his family. Maybe it’s her memories of the tales her mother told her, stories of the life she lived before she married Phoebe’s father, a Quaker merchant from America, stories of the days when she was Lady Elspeth, only daughter of the seventh Earl of Merritt, that make Phoebe feel different. Or maybe it’s the temper she struggles to control that keeps her from being an obedient Quaker. Whatever the reason, Phoebe accepts her maternal grandfather’s invitation to come home to England. But after a long, difficult journey, she is greeted by her distant cousin Major Lucas Stanton with the news that her grandfather had died and his final wish was that Phoebe marry his heir, Major Stanton.  

Lucas Stanton is not enthusiastic about his new responsibilities as the eighth Earl of Merritt. A soldier’s life suited him, as did maintaining distance from his cousin, Stephen Mallory, Marquess of Silverton, from whom he has been estranged for a decade. At first Phoebe is just one more responsibility that Lucas feels duty bound to accept, but as they come to know each other, he develops affection and respect for the young woman who is far more spirited than he expected a Quaker miss to be. She’s also far more beautiful than he expected, and he begins to think marriage to this “responsibility” might be far more satisfying than he imagined.

Phoebe quickly comes to love her new family, who welcome her warmly into their home and their hearts, but it is Lucas on whom she grows to depend for security in the London social world that often confuses her and sometimes troubles her. He also evokes feelings in her that she’s certain are most inappropriate for a Quaker. But however attractive she finds Lucas, she knows he is still very much a soldier at heart, antithetical to her beliefs, and she is determined to marry for love, while Lucas is determined to avoid the messy emotion at all costs. But a run-in with a cad at a ball and the very emotional kisses that she and Lucas exchange afterward leaves her with no choice but to marry him to avoid plunging her new-found family into scandal.

Phoebe knows she loves Lucas, and everyone but Phoebe and Lucas knows that he loves her. But the two of them are very different, and their differences are exacerbated by conditions at Mistletoe Manor and the troubles in the village. On the subject of the smuggling ring that is operating on Merritt land, Lucas is strictly law and order, and Phoebe is all compassion and mercy. Christmas is the season that honors a miracle of love, but will even the season in a house full of servants named Christmas be enough to bring this pair of opposites their own miracle?

I’ve been a Vanessa Kelly fan since I read an ARC of her debut book, Mastering the Marquess, which reminded me in many ways of my beloved traditional Regencies, which had all but disappeared at that point. One of the things I liked best was the strong, resourceful heroine who was also flawed and vulnerable. That has become the pattern of Kelly’s books, and it’s one of the reasons they are all favorites of mine. Phoebe is no exception. I loved her independence, her honesty, her refusal to forsake her beliefs. And while I may have thought Lucas should have recovered from that early love affair sooner, I both liked and understood him. There’s a particularly revealing passage early on that makes clear how he has been shaped by his experiences as a warrior:

“No one who had ever lived through war could ever completely turn his back on it. And part of him didn’t want to. Not the killing, of course, but the purpose and clarity that came with knowing what must be done, and then doing it. No messy relationships or extravagant emotions, no broken promises or betrayals that could turn a man’s life into a complicated hell.”

From that point, I knew this man and wanted to see him find his HEA.

There are Christmas books in which the holiday is just a backdrop, a stage setting that could be changed without significantly altering the story. Then, there are others in which the season is an inextricable part of the story, stories whose meaning would change in essential ways if the setting were different. His Mistletoe Bride belongs in the latter group. It’s a lovely, heartwarming story about romantic love, familial love, and love of one’s fellow human beings; it’s a story about forgiving and growing and opening one’s heart. It’s the best kind of Christmas romance. I highly recommend it.

What are some of your favorite holiday romances in which the holiday is a significant part of the story?

Review: Season for Surrender

Season for Surrender

By Teresa Romain

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: October 2, 2012

Alexander Edgeware, ninth Earl of Xavier, is a man of polished surfaces. He carefully crafts the image he presents to his world who knows him as a man who never loses with women or wagers. Because his image is important to him, he allows himself to be manipulated against his own instinct and better nature into placing a wager with his distant cousin, the Marquess of Lockwood. The bet involves Xavier’s inviting a proper young lady to his annual Christmas house party, a gathering known for its disreputable guests and dissolute celebrations. If the proper young lady remains at the party for the full two weeks, Xavier wins the wager. If she leaves, Lockwood wins. The amount of the wager is insignificant. What matters to Lockwood is winning against Xavier who enjoys his reputation of never losing a wager. Lockwood chooses the young lady—the Honorable Louisa Oliver.

  Louisa Oliver is more interested in books than beaux. So shy that few people are aware of the sharp wit and quick perception that give lie to the impression of Miss Oliver as nothing more than a quiet bluestocking, Louisa has been particularly eager to avoid society. The whispers surrounding her step-sister’s marriage to the man to whom Louisa had been engaged and the airing of all their secrets in a scandal rag (Season for Temptation) have not disappeared even nine months later. But Louisa has completed cataloging her broth-in-law’s library, and she has grown weary of the dullness of her life. Books are well and good, and she’s always interested in discovering new ones. But she’s ready to mix a little real life spice in with the literature that is her regular fare. Perhaps the unexpected invitation to Lord Xavier’s house party will prove to be the opportunity she needs to find the spice. With her aunt, the irrepressible Lady Irving as chaperone, Louisa sets out for the Christmas party.

Louisa realizes almost immediately that there is more to Xavier than his reputation. They spend time together, much of it appropriately in his library, which, as Louisa tells him, has “potential.” Gradually, she discovers Alex, a very different man from the careless, sophisticated Lord Xavier. And Alex comes to appreciate the charm and honesty and intelligence of Louisa. Image and reputation still matter to Xavier, perhaps too much. As Lady Irving says to him, “You’re a young man, and that means you do stupid things.” But he’s smart enough to know that what Xavier has valued most means less than nothing when weighed against the value of whom Alex loves.

I was one of the fans who hoped for Louisa’s story after reading Season for Temptation. I found her an interesting, endearing character in that book, and she’s even more engaging in this one. I loved watching her discover how much more she is than she has ever realized and how she pushes Xavier to reexamine the assumptions upon which he has built his public life. I like appearance versus reality as a theme, and Romain handles it skillfully in this story. Lady Irving is as delightful as she was in the first book, and Xavier’s cousin Jane is an enormously appealing young woman. I can definitely see her growing into a heroine.   

I’m an equal opportunity historical romance reader. I enjoy angsty reads and I enjoy light-hearted reads. I even enjoy what I call cotton-candy romances, light and sweet but essentially insubstantial and offering no nourishment. But my favorite light romances are not all froth; they have substance as well as sparkle. Season for Surrender is the second kind of light romance. It has warmth and meaning.  It’s going on my list of Don’t-Miss Christmas Reads of 2012. Don’t worry if you haven’t read Season for Temptation. Season for Surrender works quite well as a standalone. And for those of you who share my fondness for literary references, this book is a treasure.

We are still eighty-two days away from Christmas. What do you think of the abundance of Christmas books releasing this week? Are you ready to start reading Christmas romances before Halloween?