[romance - anthology]
You can buy it here:
Small Town Christmas
Summary: (from the publisher)
Kissing Santa Claus by Jill Shalvis
NASCAR driver Logan Perrish returns to Lucky Harbor, Washington, with love in his heart and a ring in his pocket. But can Sandy Jansen forget the past and give him a second chance? Or will Logan be spending another Christmas alone?
I'll Be Home for Christmas by Hope Ramsay
After ignoring the advice of Miz Miriam Randall, local matchmaker, Annie Roberts expects another hum drum holiday in Last Chance, South Carolina. But when a stray cat arrives in the arms of Army sergeant Matt Jasper, a calico named Holly just may be the best matchmaker of all.
O Little Town of Bramble by Katie Lane
All Ethan Miller wants for Christmas is to celebrate in Bramble, Texas, with family and friends. But when his childhood neighbor, Samantha Henderson, comes home for the holiday, Ethan realizes that the girl-next-door could be the girl of his dreams.
My thoughts:
You might want to make sure the "oh shit" bar is still functioning when Sandy's driving. That's what I kept thinking when I read this story, just because this sentence almost landed me on the floor. But there's more. As always with Jill Shalvis, in her short story Kissing Santa Claus you get a hell of a lot of laughs and even more feeling along with a wonderful heroine and a great hero. If you read the Lucky Harbor series (Simply Irresistible and The Sweetest Thing - reviews to come), you will know both Sandy and Logan. She's the one helping Jax' in the mayor's office & Logan is Tara's ex-husband.
There's something about Jill Shalvis' writing that had me hooked from the very first novel I read. She knows what she's writing about, there's no doubt about that, and she has a knack for hilarious, funny, sweet moments. This is exactly how she chose to end Kissing Santa Claus. My only complaint would be that it was too short a story, but then, that's the thing about short stories, isn't it? Also, I guess my feelings where the length are concerned have a lot to do with the fact that I can never get enough of Lucky Harbor and its residents. (Good news here - the series will have 3 more installments after Phoebe Traeger's daughters are all set with a looker of a husband!)
With I'll Be Home For Christmas, I do not want to tell too much about this story, but for some reason, here my thoughts and the plot collide so much that it is difficult. Our hero Matt just got out of the military & has one last job to finish before he will start his new life out of the uniform. When his best friend Nick died overseas, he promised to bring Nick's grandmother the last Christmas present he had bought. He strongly believes it is the right thing to give it to her in person, instead of having it shipped to her with all of Nick's other belongings & when he arrives in Last Chance (yes, really!), he finds himself at a church where the choir is practicing for mass. There he meets our heroine, Annie, who happens to know where Nick's grandmother can be found, but it is too late, so Matt has to wait until the next day.
Slowly, these two people who have never met before get to know each other and help each other in so many ways. I absolutely loved this story for the seemingly slow development of a relationship between Annie and Matt. With those characters, I ached to see them happy, especially because they are all alone in the world. You just want them to find happiness and a wonderful place to be.
Bramble, TX, is the setting for O Little Town Of Bramble. Ethan has lived in Bramble all his life and is definitely surprised when he runs into Samantha Henderson. She used to live in Bramble as we, but unlike Ethan, she left after high school to become a vet - something he has always dreamt of, but could never go for due to his family situation. This confuses Ethan as well as it makes him sad. Looking at Sammy, he sees his dream and he knows it did not come true for him. However, he soon realizes there is something else. He begins to see her as the woman she now is, instead of the child he used to know. What a cliché in romance, right? But Katie Lane pulls it off quite well, and she even manages to give the characters some scenes where they just have to laugh about themselves.
Truly remarkable in my eyes were the animal characters - and there were quite a few, considering that the people of Bramble were staging their own real nativity scene. Usually, the animals seem to be mere bystanders, in the plot because it's nice to have them, but here they played a bigger role not only with the nativity scene, but also in Ethan and Samantha's lives. I loved that so much as they all seemed to get to do something - including wreak havoc!
I did not know these authors with the exception of Jill Shalvis, who is an auto-buy author for me. Her name on the cover guarantees a lot of good laughs and with this anthology, I will add Hope Ramsay and Katie Lane to my list of authors to check out.
The sad thing is: I can't get a hardcopy of this holiday anthology because it is nowhere to be found on the German Amazon website or The Book Depository. Even on Amazon.com I could only find it through Google. I wonder what's up with that!
Rating:
4.5/5
FTC: eGalley received from the publisher through Netgalley
(Amazon eBook)