Mingle All The Way by Susan Mallery

 

Reggie has agreed to come home for Thanksgiving and stay until after Christmas.  That's a big deal since she hasn't been back to Wishing Tree since she got engaged, celebrated with all her friends and family, and then got dumped all in the same weekend.  It's a small town and everyone talks.  But her parents have decided to renew their vows with a full wedding and her mom needs a hand to make it all come together and her sister is a busy teacher and soon to be mom.  Maybe it will be nice to be home for Christmas.  Wishing Tree goes all out for Christmas.

Dena is Reggie's sister.  She has not been able to find love and so she's making a plan and taking matters into her own hands.  She's now happily in her first semester and can't wait to be a mom.  She's got a big support system and has no worries about handling it all on her own.

Mingle All the Way follows the sisters navigating challenging relationships.  Reggie with her high school boyfriend who doesn't want a relationship and Dena who meets a literal rock star.

I always enjoy Susan Mallery's books.  I love her characters and how the stories come together.  She always writes such strong female characters and Reggie and Dena are definitely strong independent women.

A Married Little Christmas by Abby Jimenez

 

A Married Little Christmas by Abby Jimenez is a collection of short stories that slightly relate to each other.  They are the most perfect Christmas stories and I think it's a very mild spice level.  What's very surprising is that I own almost all Abby Jimenez's books and this is the first one I've read.  Seeing as it's nearly Christmas I think it's the perfect first book to read of hers and fall in love with her books.  All the stories are about love at first sight.  I read the e-book and found some festive recipes at the back that sound delicious but I would love to see a physical copy as there are narrations by Jimenez's daughter.

The Twelve Loves of Christmas by various authors

 

Twelve Loves of Christmas is an advent book.  The idea being that you read one short story a day for 12 days of Christmas.  I really love the concept.  I read this book in September and as an e-book so I think the charm of it was a bit lost and I would definitely recommend a physical copy in this situation.

I'm not really a short story lover but the stories were very fast paced and quite full and complete stories.  Not every day was appealing to me but most of them were.  I definitely enjoyed this way more than I expected to and the physical copy would certainly make the reading more fun.  Probably reading it in December instead of September on vacation in Portugal would be more festive as well.  I think some of the stories would have great appeal to a young adult as well.

The Wish List Trip by Kerry Lonsdale and Orly Konig

 

Holly and Anna have just lost their beloved best friend Zoey to cancer.  To be fair they haven't been a threesome of friends for awhile now.  When Zoey's dad presents Anna and Holy with Zoey's last wishes there's no way they can say no - can they?  They are big last wishes.

Zoey wants Anna and Holly to spend two weeks travelling to all the places the girls travelled together since graduating college.  She's written the girls letters along the way with instructions.  Like take her ashes with them and scatter them everywhere.  Also, forgive each other and get back to being friends.  That's a big ask but the girls can't say no to Zoey.

In the letters Zoey reveals some big secrets that most best friends would have already revealed.  Holly and Anna have a few secrets to share too if they can even talk to each other.

This was a great read and fast paced as the girls were in a new location every few pages.  The secrets that were kept were pretty big and the unravelling of the Anna and Holly feud was just right.

Hope and Hot Chocolate on Mistletoe Lane by Victoria Walters

Holly's business of event planning isn't going to well so when she gets a call to plan a Christmas event in her home town it's hard to refuse.  She hasn't been back in Birchbrook in 10 years and this town has a lot of bad memories for her.  Holly's dad left her mom and her 10 years ago for her high school teacher.  The teasing was relentless.  Life was miserable for Holly.  Her only shining light was Paul, her best friend, but they had fell out of touch and she wasn't even sure he still lived there.

Paul is still in Birchbrook.  He's running the cafe with his parents.  He always thought he would leave too and is grumpy that he never got around to it.  Maybe this is the year he tells his parents that he's heading out.

These best friends never told each other how they felt about the other.  But now with a short time back together can they navigate those conversations and figure out happiness?

Hope and Hot Chocolate on Mistletoe Lane is book 3 in the Birch Tree Farm series.  You do not have to read the books in order.  This was a fun holiday read and my first of  many for the season.  I always love a Christmas romance novel.

Meet me in Paris by Kristin Harmel

 

I was very excited to see a new Kristin Harmel book come out and very surprised to find out it wasn't historical fiction.  Meet me in Paris tells seven story lines that take place at the same time in Paris.  I admit at first I was confused - I hadn't read anything about the book and read it just based on the author name.  There are a lot of characters in this novel but you will know them all very soon.  

I loved reading about the characters exploring Paris and enjoying the food and wine.  I loved the slow unravelling of all their individual stories.  How the characters all fell in and out of love and rediscovered old love.  There's nothing more romantic than falling in love in Paris.

This novel is sure to be a hit for fans of Kristin Harmel and I think this novel will attract new readers for her as I learned that she has many novels that aren't historical fiction.  

Book Club Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

 

Blair is an actress turned producer.  She has the perfect movie to make but the author of the novel has passed away and now it all seems doomed.  In an effort to move forward she's got a meeting with Jack and is hoping to make his novel into a movie.

After a rocky first meeting, the two slowly become friends over texting and in a shocking move Blair invites Jack to write the next book in her pool house.  While living in LA the two become much friendlier and help the other unravel their issues.

I loved that this book had a quiet theme of mental health issues.  It really felt like something I'd never read before.  I loved that the whole story wasn't about mental health issues it was just something that existed in the story but wasn't the whole story.  There should be more books like this that normalize anxiety, ocd and seeking help.

Book Club Boyfriend  was definitely more than I expected from the title and the cover - although both feel completely appropriate to the story.  I just mean that it was a story of substance.  It wasn't a quick and easy fall in love story that I expected from the cover.

I also was 70% through the novel before I realized the subtle connections to Into the Woods and that they were the same author.  Definitely no need to read that novel first but you definitely should read both.