Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Amy Lane is about to have the worst Christmas ever. Her husband of twenty years has just left her for a younger woman with a stripper pole in her bedroom.  Her university age children have called to tell her that they won’t be coming home Christmas day.  And as usual, her year ten students are capturing her lowest moments on video and uploading them to the internet. Bella Bradley will once again be having the Christmas of everyone’s dreams.  The queen of television cooking, her Christmas specials are always the highest rated shows.  She’s married to the ‘Silver Fox,” a war correspondent loved by all.  Her life is just one big Hello magazine spread. When Amy’s and Bella’s Christmases collide, it can only result in one thing - the best bake off the country has ever seen.   Bella’s Christmas Bake Off , by Sue Watson, is a fun novel that includes all of the essentials of Christmas - friendship, baking, helping each other out, and of course, a lit...

Annabel Buchanan has lived a life that many dream of.  Like the generations of her family before her, she is beautiful, wealthy, and has impeccable manners.  Or so she likes everyone to think.  A tragedy is about to show the cracks in her perfect image. Annabel’s teenage daughter Izzy is in need of a kidney transplant.  They are desperate to find a donor and Annabel must turn to her family - her real family.  It turns out that Annabel was given up for adoption by her teenage parents. When Annabel first meets the Bensons, she is embarrassed and put off by who she discovers.  The Bensons are, well, let’s just say not as well put together as Annabel is.  And the Bensons aren’t exactly impressed by Annabel’s pedigree.   As Christmas approaches, Izzy’s situation becomes more dire and the Bensons and Buchanans soon find themselves growing close as they race to find a donor.  Maybe this holiday season, Annabel will discover ...

Kimmy Jones dreams of two things - seeing her name in the headlines of the gossip pages she loves to read and owning her own cupcake company.  While she may only ever read the gossip magazines, she can definitely get her company up and running.  But when her boyfriend tells her that owning her own company isn’t sensible and that she should get a job sorting potatoes with him, she realizes that her relationship has come to an end. Finding herself homeless just before Christmas, Kimmy pretends to be a professional house sitter along with her best friend Jess and her first job is at the incredible Mistletoe Mansion.  Before she knows it, she’s living the glamorous life she always dreamed of.  She becomes fast friends with Melissa, the golf WAG next door who has the paparazzi staking out her home.  And her cupcake business is off and running thanks to Melissa and her rich friends.   But Mistletoe Mansion isn’t all it seems.  Some very strange th...

Every charm bracelet tells a story and this is especially true for Holly O’Neill.  Years ago she was mysteriously sent one with just one charm attached and over the years she has received more charms, coming at her most challenging times.  It’s almost as though the person who is sending them knows exactly what she needs. When Holly finds a lost charm bracelet, knowing how much hers means to her, she knows that she must reunite it with its owner.  But the only way she can find the owner is by using each charm as a clue.  Soon, her search has her heading all over New York City at Christmas time.  And as Holly gets closer and closer to the owner, it also leads her toward something she will never expect.  The Charm Bracelet , by Melissa Hill, is a lovely festive read about the magic of Christmas.  You can just picture the lights and the snow falling all around Holly as she puts her faith in the romance of the season. I’ve probably mentioned ...

Laurie and Rachel were inseparable growing up but as they became adults their lives took two very different paths.  Laurie is a dedicated career-girl, living and working in London, with very little time for much else.  Rachel is living in a beautiful cottage in Yorkshire, spending her days caring for her family, though she worries that her marriage may be in trouble. When Rachel’s mother-in-law falls ill, the family has to head to London for her treatment.  And when Laurie makes a major mistake at work, she decides that it is probably best she get away from it all for a bit.  They come up with a plan to swap houses in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  But as we all know, life doesn’t always go as planned.  Will their relationships be able to survive the holidays and most importantly, will they make it home in time for Christmas? Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is the first novel by chick-lit writer Abby Clements, who has since written three more n...

Juliet has always strived to be the perfect mother and that especially goes at Christmastime.  Homemade baked goods for the teachers, a nicely decorated house, and a festive feast for family and friends, she does it all.  But since her marriage broke down two years ago, Christmas has become much more difficult for her.  So this year she is turning to her sister Gemma for help. Gemma, the favourite daughter, the free-spirit, the one with the glamourous job, the one who avoids responsibility, isn’t looking forward to another Christmas at home.  So when she visits her sister before the holiday, she announces that she is jetting off to the Caribbean for some alone time. When Juliet realizes that her sister is abandoning her once again, she snaps.  And there is only one way that Gemma can fix this.  She offers to swap Christmases - she’ll stay home with the kids and Juliet can head off for some fun in the sun.   Throw in a hunky next-door nei...

Three women, three very difficult marriages.  Lorna is newly divorced, her ex-husband Stephen having run off to be with a woman half his age.  Gloria is married to alcoholic Adrian, whose drinking is driving their adult son away.  And Rosalind is married to Ivan, a man who would rather rescue teenage girls and bed their social workers in the process.  Three women in their forties who all married older men.  Three women who are starting to regret their choice in men. When Lorna inherits a grand, but crumbling, estate in Sussex from her godfather, the women hatch a plan.  Ditch their husbands at Ravenscourt House for a few days at Christmas, so the girls and their children can have a stress-free holiday for once.  But things never seem to go as planned. Difficult Husbands by Mary de Laszlo is a touching Christmas novel that looks at just how much a woman can stand when it comes to "for better or for worse." Sigh. I wanted to like this...

Evie Taylor works in the stockroom of a family-run, London department store.  You would think that this would lead to a glamorous life but for Evie, it is quite the opposite.  Even though she has been in London for the last two years, her neighbours think she’s new and her manager at work doesn’t know her name.  But she loves her job working in the beautiful old building, in a place of days gone by. One day Evie overhears a conversation and learns that if the store can’t turn things around by December 26th, then it will be sold to a big chain.  That gives the store only three weeks, it would definitely need a Christmas miracle to pull it off.  And so Evie comes up with a secret plan to transform the store and bring back the glory it once had. Miracle on Regent Street , by Ali Harris, is a fun novel that captures the spirit and magic of Christmas.  Following a young girl in a big city who gets swept up in the miracle of the season, the book is per...

Evie is looking forward to a romantic and stress-free Christmas with her boyfriend Ed at their little beach café in Cornwall.  Everything is shaping up for it to be the perfect day for the new couple.   That is until Ed’s wayward brother shows up unannounced and ready to stay a while.  Then Evie’s best friend finds herself needing to escape the spotlight so she arrives as well.  And since Evie won’t be home for Christmas, her parents decide to surprise her by showing up.  All of a sudden, Evie and Ed are putting up four extra people in their two bedroom flat above the café. Tempers flare and disasters occur and very quickly Evie finds herself trying to do whatever she can to salvage her perfect Christmas in Christmas at the Beach Café . After the hectic Christmas Evie and Ed had last year, they are looking forward to giving a romantic Christmas another go.  All they want are lazy days spent in the flat, just the two of them. But Evie...

After being left at the altar, Sybil threw herself into knitting to cope with her heartbreak.  Her house is full of knitted goodies but other than that, her life is a mess.  And she may just be responsible for a major mix-up at work.  What Sybil needs is to get away for a little bit.   Just a few weeks before Christmas, she sets off for the charming village of Tindledale, where her best friend Cher lives.  And it is there that she discovers the delightful Hettie’s House of Haberdashery, a store dedicated to knitting and needlecraft.  But Hettie, the store’s owner, is struggling and her nephew is doing everything he can to put her in a home and close down the shop. When Hettie gives Sybil an opportunity to display her beautifully hand-knitted Christmas jumpers in the shop, the community responds in a positive manner.  And the ladies soon realize that together, they may just be able to save Hettie’s store.  All it will take is a bit of co...

The last time we saw Harry and Suzie, he had set out on the mission to find the perfect proposal for Suzie, organizing one hundred proposals taking place around the world.  Suzie thought it was all just for their business, Perfect Proposals, but Harry was serious about marrying Suzie.  When we left them, they had just gotten engaged. Now Harry and Suzie are back with a bigger task - organizing one hundred proposals in the month of December alone.  Add to this the task of planning their first Christmas together as a couple and a surprise visit from the parents, and they quickly find themselves wondering if their relationship can make it through the holidays in tact. One Hundred Christmas Proposals by Holly Martin is the delightful holiday novella to follow-up the incredible One Hundred Proposals .  Fans of the first book will be very excited to see what Harry and Suzie are getting up to following Harry’s incredible proposal. I was so excited when I hea...

Carrie Blake loves her job.  As a nanny, she spends all day nurturing and playing with children.  But they are other people’s children.  In her thirties, she’s starting to feel the pain of not being able to share these wonderful moments with her own family.  She is about to take on one more job for the Christmas holiday and then her mission will be to find a new career and a love life. Single-dad Adam Fletcher is handsome and successful, but he is always working.  And his children are missing out because of it.  Even though his children are with him for the holidays, work comes first, and so he hires a highly recommended nanny to care for the children. When Carrie arrives at the Fletcher household, she is dismayed at what she sees. Polite, adorable children, who need more than what money can buy.  And so she sets out on a mission to make Adam see that it’s time for him to put his family first.  But what she doesn’t expect to happen is t...

When sisters Ella and Maddy were young, their parents divorced and the girls were split up.  Ella grew up in London with their father and Maddy in Greece with their mother.  Over the years, the family grew apart, with the girls becoming two very different people.  But this Christmas, the family is going to be thrown back together. When Ella finds out that her husband is cheating on her, she makes a quick escape to the only place she can think of, her mothers taverna in Greece.  Maddy is dreaming of a white Christmas and jets off to London to take a singing gig, but that leads her right into the path of her father.  It may seem like the sisters have done a life swap but it becomes much, much more.  As the girls each find themselves cooking up a storm in the others kitchen for Christmas, they find themselves coming to terms with the past.  And they both realize that the only thing missing this Christmas is each other. The Little Christmas Kitc...

The snow is falling in Ashford, Connecticut, the Christmas holidays are here, and the wedding of the year is just around the corner!  Lily, owner of the Gingerbread Café, is planning the day of her dreams, a Christmas Eve wedding to her incredible fiancé Damon. Everything is falling right into place….until her mother-in-law arrives.  Lily can’t figure out why but for some reason, Olivia doesn’t seem to want this wedding to take place.  Already stressed out from planning for the big day and dealing with the bustling festive activity at her café, this is definitely something she doesn’t need.  Will Lily make it down the aisle with her sanity in tact? Christmas Wedding at the Gingerbread Café is the deliciously festive third book in Rebecca Raisin’s Gingerbread Café series.  Set in a small village, this book is chock full of loveable characters, funny moments, and sweet treats. I didn’t realize when I picked up this book that it is part of a series ...