Extending Christmas: Reviews of a Few More Christmas Books

There’s still a bit over a week before Twelfth Night marks the end of the Christmas season, just enough time to read one or more of the following Christmas books guaranteed to leave you smiling at the HEA.

Holiday for Two

By Maggie Robinson and Elyssa Patrick

Release Date: December 9, 2013

I love cabin romances, and I love Christmas books. Combine those two pluses with the fact that the authors of Holiday for Two are friends and former fellow Bon Bons, and I knew this one would be a winner. I was right. Both stories are delightful.

“All Through the Night”

This novella is Maggie Robinson’s first published contemporary romance. Thus, it seems particularly appropriate that the hero, Griffin Archer, is a viscount with an English accent and a likeness to Mr. Darcy that make him a fantasy come to life for the heroine. She is Carrie Moore, personal assistant to a successful mystery writer, who also happens to be the hero’s aunt.

The two miss the last ferry to an island off the coast of Maine where said aunt is expecting both her nephew and personal assistant. The snowstorm that closed the ferry makes travel hazardous, and Carrie and Griffin end up taking shelter from the storm in a carriage house conveniently winterized to protect a vintage Jaguar. A lot of chemistry and a bit of role playing make one snowed-in Christmas Eve a night to remember.

Both Carrie and Griffin are engaging characters. I found Carrie’s blend of pragmatism and imagination strongly appealing, and Griffin was a delightful mix of stuffiness and sexiness. I rank Robinson’s contemporary debut a smashing success, and I’ll definitely be among her eager readers if she writes more in this subgenre.

“While It Was Snowing”

Felicity Evans and Harry Walsh have been friends since they were children, but some looks Felicity has been receiving from Harry have her thinking there might be more than friendship to their relationship. Since Felicity is a confident, modern woman, she has no hesitation in deciding an intimate weekend in a Vermont cabin will be the perfect setting. But Harry, who has loved Felicity since he entered his teens, is a self-proclaimed geek who thinks Felicity deserves someone better.

Felicity is primed for seduction, and Harry wants to talk. Misunderstandings ensue, but the special connection these two have is strong enough to survive the awkwardness, the missteps, and the risks of friends becoming lovers.

A beta hero par excellence, a friends-to-lovers plot that is endearingly credible, and an opening scene that ranks with the funniest I’ve read make Patrick’s novella a standout.  The epilogue is the perfect finishing touch. The author says that this is a standalone work, but I bet I’m not the only one who would love to read Nora and Ben’s story.

The Wrong Christmas Carol

By J. A. Ferguson

Publisher: Belle Books

Release Date: December 28, 2013

(Reissue of 2006 novel from ImaJinn Books)

Mr. Shepard has spent two years doing his best to foster a match between his tenants Gabby D’Angelo and Dr. Mike Archer, but they have stubbornly resisted all his efforts. His last resort is a prayer that arrives at the heavenly Prayer Care Center at a moment when the angel in charge is distracted. He sends an answer only to realize too late that he acted too quickly.

Gabby is surprised when the police recover her stolen car so quickly, but not nearly as surprised as she is when the officers also return to her an infant born one minute after midnight on Christmas Day. Her name according to the hospital bracelet she still wears and according to hospital records is Carol D’Angelo. Gabby knows that the baby cannot be hers; nevertheless, she feels an instant connection with her.

Life with a new born is more exhausting than Gabby expected, but she manages with the help of her landlord, Mr. Shepard, who ransacks his attic where his granddaughter has stored all the baby paraphernalia an infant needs; with the cooperation of all the people, staff and residents, of the senior center where Gabby works, who christen Carol “CeeBee” for “cute baby” and eagerly offer to take turns providing on-site childcare; and with the assistance of good neighbor, Mike Archer, who provides take-out meals for the busy mother, expertise as the oldest of a large family, and kisses filled with tantalizing promise.

The baby accomplished what Mr. Shepard’s efforts did not. It brought Gabby and Mike together, but a union between artist Gabby who has no problem believing in angels and miracles and medical researcher Mike who trusts only in logic and empirical evidence proves fraught with complications. Meanwhile the angel who made the error is sent to earth to correct the problems he created, but he only seems to complicate matters.

If this were not a Christmas story, I would label it saccharine, but my tolerance for sweet stories increases tenfold or more at this season. I loved the premise of the story, adored the baby, and found the conscientious, awkward angel with a fondness for chocolate cake and the matchmaking landlord endearing. I’m adding this one to my holiday reread list.

The Surprise Holiday Dad

By Jacqueline Diamond

Publisher: Harlequin (American Romance)

Release Date: January 7, 2014

Private detective Wade Hunter returns to Safe Harbor as soon as he learns that the mother of his son has died. There is nothing Wade wants more than to be a real father to his son, and he is determined to begin immediately. He may not have as much to offer as the doctor aunt who has been young Reggie’s primary caretaker and is eager to adopt him, but he can be the father his son needs, the one thing the doctor aunt can’t give Reggie.

Adrienne Cavill, an obstetrician at the Safe Harbor obstetrical hospital, loves her sister’s son as if he were her own child. She has already begun the adoption process to make him hers by law as well as by love. She is shocked when Wade Hunter turns up demanding to be part of his son’s life. Frightened that she will lose Reggie to his father, she prepares to fight—only to discover Wade Hunter is quite different from the man she has been led to believe he is.

Given that the protagonists are both good people who genuinely love Reggie, the plot of this story is predictable from the first. But it is a pleasure to see characters who really do place the needs of the child first and who learn that compromise is possible. This is a sweet story, the twelfth in Diamond’s Safe Harbor Medical series—with three more in the works. I had no difficulty following the story, and I liked it well enough that I plan to check out others in the series.

This week I’m reading some spring 2014 releases and rereading some favorites by Georgette Heyer. What are you reading during the last days of 2013?

Another July 30 Release: Lady Anne's Lover

Lady Anne’s Lover

By Maggie Robinson

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: July 30, 2013

Lady Imaculata Egremont has spent the two years since her debut making herself the most scandalous lady in London. Her exploits have filled the pages of The London List, and her name has figured prominently in London’s spiciest scandals from nude plunges in fountains to public kisses shared with another lady. What the gossips don’t know is that the lady has courted scandal deliberately in an effort to make her father, an earl with political clout and a reputation for high morality, grow so disgusted with her behavior that he abandons his incestuous plans for his daughter. When Evangeline Ramsey (Lord Gray’s List) learns the truth, she helps Lady Imaculata transform herself into Anne Mont and to leave London to answer an ad for a housekeeper in Wales.

Major Gareth Ripton-Jones has lost a great deal, and it looks as if he is about to lose more. A hero of most of the major battles of the Napoleonic Wars, he returned home whole only to lose an arm in a freak fall. The woman he hoped to marry, disgusted by his disability, dumped him, and then his father died, leaving him with an estate in ruins. When his former beloved was murdered, the village concluded Gareth was the culprit and ostracized him. Having given up on saving his estate, Gareth is expecting to be forced to sell his land, and he is drinking himself into a stupor while he waits. Since the locals refuse to work for him, he is forced to advertise in The London List for a housekeeper.

Anne’s housekeeping skills are laughable, but the major is so inebriated that he hardly notices. He can’t ignore the curves of his housekeeper who appears far too young to for her job and for the widowed status she claims. Anne sets out to solve the major’s problems, starting with an attempt to scold him into sobriety. When she proposes a marriage of convenience that will allow her access to the fortune her mother left her and give the major a way to save his land, Gareth agrees, thinking the marriage may be convenient in more ways than one. The ending is predictable, but along the way to a satisfying HEA, the murderer is revealed, the evil earl defanged, and two delightful, deserving protagonists find love.

This is the third and final book, following Lord Gray’s List and Captain Courant’s Countess, in Maggie Robinson’s series featuring a London tabloid. Lady Anne’s Lover reveals Robinson’s knack for combining humor and heat with a heart-stirring tale. I loved Anne from the opening sentence. Despite the real horror of her situation, she displays ingenuity, strength, and courage and maintains a sense of compassion for her fellow human beings. Her bumbling attempts at housekeeping are funny, but it says much about her character that she is tenacious in her efforts. She is also straightforward in expressing her views about the major’s surrender to self-pity and alcohol.  It took longer for Gareth to win my heart. I thought he could have used more of Anne’s strength of character, but I will admit that if his victory over alcohol had been won speedily, I would have complained about that. He comes through in the end, and much can be forgiven a man with sapphire eyes. I should also note that although Gareth defends her honor, Anne is just as much her own savior in the penultimate scene. Thank you, Maggie!

If you haven’t read the London List books, you are missing a rare treat. Lady Anne’s Lover can certainly be read as a standalone, but why deny yourself the pleasure of a stellar trilogy. If you’re a fan of historical romance that sizzles and scintillates and satisfies, you’ll become a fan of Maggie Robinson.

I realized when reading this book that several of my favorite historical romances feature heroes battling alcoholism. Do you have favorites that treat this subject? Are there any historicals that feature heroines who are recovering alcoholics?

Tuesday Review: In the Arms of the Heiress

In the Arms of an Heiress

By Maggie Robinson

Publisher: Berkley Sensation

Release Date: July 2, 2013

When heiress Louisa Stratton gained control of her fortune, she left Rosemont, her palatial estate in England, where her aunt had maintained rigid control over her for more than two decades. For the past year, she has been motoring across the continent, accompanied only by her outspoken maid, Kathleen Carmichael. Louisa has delighted in her freedom and her adventures. When her aunt’s cautionary letters bemoaning the dangers threatening two young women alone became too burdensome, Louisa invented a husband, Maximillian Norwich, whom she met at the Louvre and married after a whirlwind courtship. 

But now letters from her cousin Hugh and her aunt’s doctor warning Louisa that her aunt is seriously ill have been added to her aunt’s demands that Louisa return home and introduce Maximillian to her family have increased the pressure on Louisa to curtail her European adventures. Problems with her bank also require her presence in England. But going home leaves Louisa with the problem of Max. She briefly considers killing him off, but Kathleen reminds her of the difficulties his death would present. The idea of a mourning period has no appeal for Louisa, and so she decides to hire a husband, or at least a man to play the role of Max, from the Evensong Agency, whose motto was “Performing the Impossible Before Breakfast Since 1888.”

Charles Cooper, a veteran of the second Boer War, has resigned his captaincy and set out to drink himself into oblivion. Self-destruction is the only way he knows to eradicate his memories of war and its atrocities. The son of a factory foreman, Charles was sent to Harrow at twelve by George Alexander, the owner of the pottery works that employed Charles’s father, where Charles and his brothers went to work as soon as they were old enough to be hired. Alexander recognized Charles’s intelligence and gave him a gentleman’s education that would allow him to live a better life, but education also separated Charles from his family by a distance that no trip home could bridge. Charles is not close to his two older brothers, who still work in Alexander’s factory, nor to their families, but he is determined to leave them money and his journals about his war experiences, hoping they will understand him then.

Charles thinks Mrs. Evensong is crazy when she offers him a job. He does his best to alienate her with his crudeness, but Mary Evensong is made of sterner stuff than he realizes. When he learns the munificent sum Louisa Stratton is willing to pay for him to become Maximillian Norwich for thirty days, he seizes the offer as a way to provide for his brothers and their families. He concludes that Louisa is a “silly society bitch” with questionable sanity and too much money, but he can endure her for the handsome fee she’s offering.

From his first sight of Louisa, Charles begins to discover she is completely outside his experience: “She was a golden girl from tip to toe. Miss Louisa Stratton looked like money, honey, and double cream.”  Charles is outside Louisa’s experience as well. The fictional Maximillian may have been ideal, “entirely considerate of [her] feelings, always at [her] elbow ready to be helpful. . . . [to] discuss art and history and philosophy and [take her] opinions as seriously as his own,” but he was not half so tempting as the rough-edged Charles. Between the intimacy of sharing a suite and the visions Charles and Louisa keep having of one another’s nude bodies, the temptation to enjoy the benefits of true matrimony within their fake bonds are growing, and yielding to temptation is so pleasurable—especially when this unlikely pair find their hearts are making choices their heads having caught up with. But Louisa and Charles are not the only ones with secrets, and some secrets prove dangerous. Someone at Rosemont is determined to get rid of Maximillian. If he can’t be bought off, poison or a bullet may work. Louisa and Charles must learn to trust one another wholly if they want to survive to see their game of pretense become the real thing.

In the Arms of the Heiress is the first book in Robinson’s turn-of-the-century Ladies Unlaced series, and it is an absolute delight. Funny, poignant, and sexy, it has all the charm of a classic screwball comedy with more substance. Charles is a tortured hero, a type that Robinson creates with great skill, but the specifics of his working-class history, the horrific details of his experience in South Africa, and his unique combination of angst and humor make him distinctly individual.  Louisa is a darling. I fell for her on the second page when she imagines Maximillian’s death and thinks “If there had really been a Maximillian, she was sure she’d show all the proper feeling for losing the love of her life. She probably wouldn’t rise from her lonely bed for weeks, perhaps months. Years. She’d rival the late queen in her longing for Albert, only she’d be far more attractively dressed.”

The secondary characters add dimension, particularly Kathleen, the loyal, tart-tongued maid who has her own love interest. Louisa’s family left me indignant on her behalf, and the mystery of the attacks on Charles and Louisa kept me guessing until very near the multi-threaded end. The mystery of the supremely confident and competent Mary Evensong remains unresolved. I have speculated wildly about the implications of her name. I’m hoping the second book in the series, In the Heart of the Highlander (October 1, 2013) will answer all my questions. It features Mary and a Highlander hero. I’ve already starred it as a do-not-miss-this book on my calendar.

If you like historical romance that leaves you with a laugh and a sigh and a decided impatience for the next book in the series, I highly recommend In the Arms of the Heiress.

What's the last book you read that you loved so much it left you impatient for the next book in the series?

Captain Durant's Countess

Captain Durant's Countess
By Maggie Robinson
Publisher: eKensington
Release Date: March 21, 2013




Only the great affection she has for her husband would have sent Maris, Countess of Shelby inside the Reigning Monarchs Society in search of Captain Reynold Durant, who is reneging on the bargain he has struck with the Earl of Kelby. Maris’s relationship with her much older husband may not be the stuff of fairy tales, but her esteem for him and her loyalty to him are unquestionable. Maris understands the desperation that led him to hire Captain Durant’s services, and she is determined to see that the Captain fulfills the agreement for which he has already been paid. Her determination proves strong even when she is confronted by Durant in all his naked insouciance.

Reyn Durant had been desperate himself when he responded to an advertisement in The London List. His sister Virginia was ill, and Reyn needed money to see that she received not only the best medical care but also a home beyond London’s polluted environs where good food and fresh air might increase her chances of survival. Good luck at the gambling tables has given him the means to repay the money Kelby gave him, and he has every intention of doing so. His restlessness and boredom since leaving military life may have led him to participate in the debauchery of London’s most exclusive sex club, but his sense of honor won’t let him serve as stud for Kelby’s countess, no matter if the old man needs an heir to save his estate from a conscienceless nephew. But refusing becomes more difficult once he meets Maris and finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Frankly, if an author I trusted less than I trust Maggie Robinson had used this plot, the story line alone would have made me ignore the book. Even though Jo Beverley and Cecilia Grant have proved themselves storytellers gifted enough to overcome my instinctive ick response to the adultery-for-a-greater-good plot, it’s one I prefer to avoid. But I’ve been a Maggie Robinson fan since before she was published, and I know she is an adept writer. Maris and Reyn eventually become winsome characters. Robinson builds layers of complexity into the story, refusing to guild the reality of adultery. Maris’s guilt is real, and Reyn is surprisingly vulnerable beneath the façade of experienced charmer. Watching them become friends as well as lovers made it impossible not to root for their HEA. 

Captain Durant’s Countess may not be quite so spectacularly good as is Lord Gray’s List, but it is a worthy addition to a series built on a fascinating premise. Wherever Maggie Robinson goes next with the London List books, I plan to follow. I recommend both books to readers looking for a sizzling romance, a powerful story, and fine writing.

For a limited time, Lord Gray’s List is available for Kindle and Nook for $1.99.

Are there plots that you usually avoid? Are there authors gifted enough to win you over despite your dislike of certain story lines?