Review - - Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas: A Novel

by Courtney Cole

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: October 11, 2022

Reviewed by PJ

From New York Times bestselling author Courtney Cole, the Magic of the Christmas Season sends a woman back in time to the 1940s where she meets her own grandmother and learns the true meaning of family and the holiday.

Piper McCaulley doesn’t know which way is up or down. Her gran, her last remaining family, died two weeks before Christmas, leaving Piper to reevaluate her life. Did she really want to stay chained to the family business just to hang on to this old house? She didn’t care that her great-great-great grandpa had built it with his own hands. How could she make huge life decisions if she’d never even been outside of Alaska?

She needs to leave the snowy wilderness that’s her backyard and see the world, and since her gran left her a battered old compass, Piper takes this a secret message from her beloved grandmother: to follow her heart.

But before she is even a foot outside the door, Piper finds herself caught in a blizzard and wakes up in 1945 in the original home that her ancestors had built—a time when her gran was just a girl Piper’s age. Once she has gotten over the shock, Piper has the joy of getting to know her grandmother in a whole new way, a way that sheds light on everything Piper had come to know and not know about her own past. 

Over the course of one magical holiday season, Piper must go on a journey through time to learn the meaning of real love, home, and how a family legacy can connect one another forever.  

PJ's Thoughts:

This book reached into my heart and left me flooded with feelings. So many feelings. I never knew my great-grandmother but I've always been curious about her. Understandable, as she died minutes after I, her first great-granddaughter, was born. Imagine being transported to a place and time where I might have the opportunity to get to know her as a young woman? Imagine the impact that "meeting" might have not only on my life but on hers as well? Is it any wonder that this book spoke to me? 

The story started slow and, admittedly, didn't grab me right away. It wasn't until Piper landed in the past - where the majority of the book took place - that I began to become engaged, more so with each page turned. The stage the author set in WWII Alaska was brought to life on the page, complete with all of the hardships of the time. But in the midst of the deprivations, she also spotlighted the joy that was to be found in companionship, kindness, and simple pleasures. It wasn't long before I was fully immersed in both the place, the time, the group of veterans boarding at the family lodge, and the reindeer. The adorable, much loved reindeer.

Did I have to suspend disbelief to lose myself in a story where a present-day young woman finds herself sharing a home with her grandmother (at the same age) and the great-grandparents she never knew? Yes. Did I care? Not in the least. Cole made the story so believable that I never once stopped to think, "this isn't real." In my mind, and my heart, it was all happening exactly as written on the page. All those emotions Piper was experiencing as she uncovered previously unknown facets about her grandmother - and herself - were flowing through me as well, including the emotions of falling in love for the first time...with someone living in the past. You better believe I fretted about how that was going to all turn out when Piper was sent back to her own time. If she was sent back. I was so immersed in the story, so invested in the characters and events of the past as they played out that I actually didn't stop to think about that until Piper did...near the end of the book. And then I wondered how the author would possibly give me an ending that made my romantic heart happy. I mean, I knew she'd have to leave eventually. She couldn't be allowed to continue to live in the same space as her ancestors. I wasn't ready for two hearts who had fallen head over heels into a once in a lifetime love to be broken but how to solve the dilemma of them being from two different lifetimes? I won't give away any spoilers so I'll just say that I was very happy with the tear-inducing, sigh-worthy, fill my heart with joy, unexpected ending. 

If you're in the mood for a magical, heart-tugging, feel-good story of love, family, finding your path, and your happiness, pick up a copy of Home for Christmas. It's a book I will be happily revisiting every Christmas. 

Review - - Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas

By Holly Chamberlin

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: October 31, 2017

Reviewed by Janga

  

Six years ago when Nell King’s husband left her for a younger woman, she left her “perfect life” in a Boston suburb behind and moved to Yorktide, Maine, to start a new life with her daughters, Molly and Felicity, then fifteen and eleven. Nell found healing and happiness in Yorktide, but as this Christmas approaches, she is overcome with sadness at thoughts of her soon-to-be-empty nest. With Molly planning to marry shortly after she graduates in June and Felicity looking forward to college in the fall and planning to spend next Christmas in Switzerland with her father and celebrity stepmother, Nell realizes this Christmas may be the last one her family of three will share.  She determines to make this Christmas one her daughters will always remember, their best Christmas ever.

As Nell struggles with concerns about who she will be once her daughters no longer need her, she begins decorating the day after Thanksgiving. By the second week in December, the house is filled with Christmas trimmings, including three Christmas trees, one so big that it required two men to move it into the house. Her kitchen is filled with holiday cookies and candies, and every spare minute from her job as office manager of a local veterinary practice is taken up with her Christmas handcraft du jour.

Despite her efforts, the season is not measuring up to expectations. Her daughters are begging off participating in some of the family’s cherished traditions. Molly is planning to break up with her longtime boyfriend to avoid losing herself in marriage and motherhood, a decision that Nell sees as a critique of her own life. Felicity, influenced by her stepmother, is displaying a disturbing materialism. And the reappearance of Eric Manville, now a successful novelist and the man Nell loved madly at twenty-one, is forcing her to question choices she made long ago.

This has been a good year for heartwarming Christmas stories with the sentiment and seasonal packaging of a Hallmark movie. Add Holly Chamberlin’s Christmas novel to the list of those that do this sort of story well. Although this is women’s fiction with Nell’s journey to a rediscovery of self at its center, the romantic element is strong enough to make the book appealing to romance readers. The characters are relatable, and Nell’s decorating, baking/candy making, gifting frenzy will strike a familiar note with many readers. So too will her fears that the reality of the holiday will not measure up to her dreams of what it should be. Themes of second chances, forgiveness, and reconciliation add greater substance.

This is a sweet story that manages to avoid the saccharine. There are no villains here. Even the ex-husband is a man with strengths as well as weaknesses and a father who loves his daughters. If you like quieter stories without high drama or sizzling sensuality, I think you will appreciate this one. I did, and I give it an unqualified recommendation for readers who are more sentimental than cynical. 

Review - - Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas

By Lily Everett

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Release Date: October 6, 2015

Lily Everett offers readers a contemporary take on the classic 1940s Christmas movie, Christmas in Connecticut in the latest addition to her small-town series.

Like Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) in the movie, Libby Leeds is a journalist who has made a name for herself writing about her idyllic life, but her column for Savor magazine is based on a tissue of lies—or a lovely fiction, if one wants to be kind. Libby’s reality, like Elizabeth’s, is a small New York City apartment from which she weaves her accounts of the life of the fictional Libby’s life, a life filled with the warmth of family, a cherished old house, a happy marriage, and superior domestic skills. The real Libby is single, she literally cannot boil water, and her only close family is her Uncle Ray who gave her a home after she was orphaned. Libby’s income from her writing pays for Uncle Ray’s care at an assisted living facility.  Libby did live on Sanctuary Island until her parents were killed in an automobile accident, but due to Uncle Ray’s estrangement from his father, Libby doesn’t know her grandfather and other family members. And she hasn’t been back to Sanctuary Island since she left as a ten-year-old.

Along with most of America, Libby has been captivated by the story of Sergeant First Class Owen Shepard, a decorated hero (like Jefferson Jones, hero of Christmas in Connecticut), who wants to give his young daughter a perfect Christmas. Libby has just watched the famous interview with Sgt. Shepard for the fifty-first time when she gets a phone call from her boss with the news that Shepard and his family, who serendipitously live on Sanctuary Island, will be spending Christmas with Libby and her family.  Even the truth can’t save Libby. When she confesses, her boss tells her she can host Shepard and his family at her grandfather’s home or be sued for fraud.

                                               

Owen Shepard is not exactly filled with the joy of the season as he makes his way to Sanctuary Island. First, he is still reluctantly accepting that the army has put him on the Permanent Disability Retired List and determined that his status will not be permanent. Then, there’s the second stage of rehabilitation which is scheduled to take place at the Windy Corner Therapeutic Riding Center and Owen’s reservation about that. His biggest concern is about being a father to his eight-year-old daughter, whom he has never seen.

Libby and Owen end up on the same ferry to Sanctuary Island, and the self-sufficient Owen finds himself talking to Libby about himself with an openness that is out of character for him. As for Libby, she finds Owen in the flesh even more appealing than Owen on her computer screen. But, of course, Owen thinks Libby is a married woman, and her status is confirmed when she is greeted upon arriving at Sanctuary Island by her “husband,” actually her cousin Nash, who has his own tangled romance to complicate matters further.  

But Christmas is a season for miracles, and there are quite a few in store for Libby and Owen as truths are told, families are reunited, and hearts are healed.

Scrooges and grinches should be aware that they may suffer from an overdose of sweetness while reading Home for Christmas. This is a very Christmassy Christmas story, complete with gingerbread houses, snow angels, mistletoe, a mysterious Santa who closely resembles the mythic figure, and a nativity play in the next thing to a stable with live animals and Owen’s daughter as Mary—but riding a pony instead of a donkey. Since I am an avowed sentimentalist when it comes to the season, I loved it. It probably helped that Christmas in Connecticut is a movie I watch every December along with It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34^th Street (the one with Edmund Gwenn and a young Natalie Wood).

This is the fourth book in Everett’s Sanctuary Island series (not counting the six connected Billionaire novellas), and I think it is the best one since the titular book that debuted the series. If you like your Christmas romances on the sweet side with lots of traditional trimmings and just enough sizzle to keep the temperature toasty, I predict you will enjoy Home for Christmas.

~Janga