Christmas Romance Novellas Part 5

A Canadian exchange teacher finds love next door in suburban London, a movie star comes home and discovers his childhood love, seat mates on an airline flight from Los Angeles to Minneapolis via Denver experience more than connecting flights, a New Orleans sous chef finds an old childhood friend in the Rockies of Colorado, and an interior designer with a domineering and bedridden boss loses her heart to the boss’s son. It’s the next batch of Christmas romance novellas. 

In Christmastime in London Town by Clare Revell, Kelly Seda is a Canadian schoolteacher raising his daughter Wendy on his own after his wife’s death. The opportunity to teach in London that he almost received unexpectedly reappears, with only a few days to prepare before he’s teaching first grade in a suburban London school. 

 

Staci Kirk is a writer raising her son Tommy alone, her husband having been killed in action in Afghanistan. She suddenly has a new neighbor, and she goes the extra mile to welcome Kelly and his daughter to England. As the Christmas holidays approach, Kelly and Staci discover there may be more to neighborliness. A major scene of the story takes place in central London, and it’s fun to read about Hanley’s Toy Store, the big Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church. 

 

A Christmas Homecoming by Kimberly Rose Johnson tells the story of interior designer Bailey Calderwood, who lives in Oregon and is working for a tough boss who’s recovering from a stroke. The boss’s son, Stephen Belafonte, returns home from France, where he’s been living after the death of his wife three years previously. 

 

His mother wants Stephen to fire Bailey, but she won’t say why. What Stephen learns is that Bailey is the glue holding the business together, and he doesn’t understand why she puts up with his mother’s bullying. He’s also falling for her. In addition to the family issues and a growing attraction to Stephen, Bailey senses she’s being followed everywhere she goes by someone driving a silver sedan. The story mixes together some Christmas, some romance, and a bit of suspense.

 

In Mistletoe Movie Star by Stacey Weeks, Jonas Blade is a movie star with a passel of romantic movies behind him (think the Hallmark Channel). He’s returning home to Misteltoe Meadows to close his grandfather’s estate, which included a lodge, a Christmas tree business, and even an old motel now occupied by homeless people when they’re not chased away by authorities. Charlene is Jonas’s old teenaged friend and now a veterinarian. Charlene’s also trying to convince the town’s council to do something for the homeless, while trying to watch out for three girls she suspects fall into that category.

 

Jonas and Charlene meet by accident (literally) and only slowly realize who they are; Jonas Blade is a film name and Charlene has changed considerably when they spent summers together as teens. He’s determined to help her address the homeless problem; the two are also rediscovering the love of their teen years. 

 

First Class Christmas by Katy Eeten brings together two seatmates on an airline flight. Mandy Brockman is flying home from Los Angeles, where she was in a friend’s wedding. She had expected to have her boyfriend be her wedding date and then go skiing with his family, but he broke up with her right before the wedding. On the plane, she’s seated next to Chase Hawkins, an Olympic pole vaulter also on his way home to Minneapolis. 

 

Mandy and Chase discover a mutual attraction, but there’s a problem. She’s drifted away from church, while Chase is not only firmly anchored in his faith but is also part of the church worship band and an outreach program to the city’s less fortunate. He pulls Mandy to the church service and to helping others, but will their relationship take off?

 

A New Orleans sous chef is the heroine of Deep Freeze Christmas by Marian Merritt.  Leona Buquet has accompanied chef Julian Mayeux from their native New Orleans to Colorado. They’ve been hired for a week to cook for some old friends of Julian’s who are in the movie production business. Leona is thrilled to be visiting a part of the country she’s never experienced, and to see snow at Christmastime. 

 

Cameron Fleming is the son of the movie production company chief, and he remembers growing up in New Orleans and helping Chef Julian in the kitchen, so much so that he really wanted to be a chef himself. He’s expected to accompany a diva of a movie star who’s also visiting, but he has no interest in her at all. But he knows Leona looks familiar, and a growing attraction between him and sous chef quickly leads to rekindling a long-ago childhood romance.

 

Related:

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 1.

 

Christmas, Suspense, and Romance: Christmas Novellas, Part 2.

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 3.

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 4. 

 

Top photograph by Levi Midnight via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Christmas, Romance, and Prodigals

We love our prodigals!

The return of the prodigal, or a character behaving like a prodigal, is one of the common themes of romance stories. And in Christmas romance stories as well. 

The prodigal is usually, but not always, a son, a father, a boyfriend, a brother – a male. He returns home after an extended absence, upending all kinds of former relationships. He may be healed, with no one still trusting him, or he may still be broken, with the healing to come. Sometimes the story is a retelling of the parable spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Sometimes it’s a story inspired by the parable but not bearing much connection to it. 

Prodigal stories do share one primary characteristic – the prodigal returns home and fines forgiveness, redemption, and sometimes love (eventually).

Not Until Christmas Morning by Valerie Bodden

Austin Hart is a bitter young man. He’s working himself physically, trying to recover from an IED attack in Afghanistan. The attack killed his best friend and an 11-year-old boy the unit had adopted. And Austin lost his foot and part of his leg. He’s determined to physically train himself so he can return to his unit, but the odds are stacked against him.

In addition to his foot, Austin lost his faith. God simply wouldn’t allow that kind of death and destruction, so there must be no God. Austin’s brother Chad is still stationed in Afghanistan and talks with him weekly. Chad knows his brother is struggling.

Auston decides to return to Hope Springs, the town where he and his brother were born and spent part of their childhood years. He rents a house next door to Leah, an early 30-something who has decided God wants her to be single and has taken on the biggest project of her life – 12-year-old Jackson, a foster child who’s bounced around nine different foster homes, stays in trouble in school, and is determined not to love anyone. 

Austin becomes the connecting link between the boy and Leah, and Leah and Austin both discover romantic connections developing between them. But Austin still struggles with his anger and bitterness, and Leah, having been hurt once in romance, is resisting the idea of romance. 

Not Until Christmas Morning, part of the Hope Springs series by Valerie Bodden, is a well-done, moving story of three broken people circling each other, each afraid to touch and afraid to be touched. 

A Christmas Homecoming by MaryAnn Diorio

Seven years before, Sonia and Rick Pettit’s daughter Jody left home, disappearing without a trace. She left behind her parents and her brother Ben. Rick was devastated by his daughter’s abandonment and eventually died of what was officially heart disease but was really from what the doctor called a broken heart. Ben has been embittered by his sister’s desertion of the family, and he’s increasingly finding solace in alcohol. 

Sonia keeps praying for her daughter’s return, as impossible as it seems. No one knows whether Jody is alive or dead; a private investigator hired by the family found no trace of her, anywhere.

Jody, however, is very much alive and living in Australia. She’s a divorced mom of twins, struggling to keep her job in a difficult economy and provide for her children. She deeply regrets abandoning her family. When she loses her job in a bankruptcy right before Christmas, she decides to use what little savings she has to return home to Virginia in the United States. But it won’t be the homecoming she hopes for.

A Christmas Homecoming by MaryAnn Diorio is a retelling of the Biblical parable, with a daughter taking the place of the prodigal son. We watch a family come to grips with loss, hurt, and pain as they struggle to find hope and forgiveness.

Everybody Loves Mickey by Therese Travis

Fireman Mickey Hurst was at one time much like a prodigal, but he’s found faith, reformed, and works hard as a volunteer at his church. People at the church love Mickey, except for Aubrey Thomas, who works in the church office. Years before, Aubrey was the recipient of a drunken pass by Mickey, which was made worse by his apology, which sounded a lot like “I’d have to be drunk to try to kiss you.” What Mickey meant was something else entirely, but Aubrey allowed his words to steel her heart.

For his part, Mickey knows he’s love with Aubrey and has been for years. But her ongoing hostility prevents him from trying to take the relationship any further. As a church volunteer, he sees Aubrey almost every day, and he does his best to dodge the arrows she tosses at him with words, auctions, and attitudes.

Everyone else at the church sees the obvious – the two are meant for each other. And so a loose conspiracy of matchmaking is born, beginning with the choir director asking Mickey and Aubrey to sing a duet for the church’s Christmas program.

Everybody Loves Mickey by Therese Davis tells the story of Mickey and Aubrey, a story of walls between people gradually coming down. It’s a story about missed communications, past hurts and disappointments, and (we hope) love.

Photograph by Josh Harrison via Unsplash, Used with permission.

Christmas, Romance, and Returning Home

A common feature of many romance novels is the idea of returning home. In some, it’s a prodigal son or daughter coming back to family. Others have a main character who’s become wildly successful – in Silicon Valley or Nashville, for example – but returning home for a family illness, a career crisis, or a personal issue, among other reasons. And “home” is usually a small town, with small-town values and where everyone knows everyone else.

And the idea of “returning home” is perfectly suited for Christmas, because millions of people in real life return home to family for the annual holiday.

A Christmas Homecoming by Melissa McClone

In A Christmas Homecoming by Melissa McClone (part of her Bar V5 Ranch series), Josiah Whitaker returns to his hometown of Marietta, Montana, but not voluntarily. The board of his highly successful Silicon Valley company has forced him to take leave for the month of December. Josiah had cut his hand on a zipline and developed a blood disease as a result, which had left him exhausted and somewhat frail. But his workaholism had driven him back to work before he should have gone. A fainting spell in his office forced the board the act.

Josiah, perhaps borrowing a characteristic from Ebenezer Scrooge, hates Christmas, because it disrupts work, and work is what life is about. His hometown also brings back memories of the death of his best friend Buck Smith, the teenager who befriended the then-geeky and friendless Josiah before dying of cancer. It turns out that Buck’s sister Ellie works at the ranch where Josiah will be staying. Ellie is still working through her own issues from her brother’s death, including a good head of resentment that her life and her parents’ lives revolved around her brother’s illness for years.

At first slowly and then quickly, two people are brought together by shared memories, their hometown, and the discovery that they may have more in common than they realized.

Love, Snow, and Mistletoe: Four Novellas

Love, Snow, and Mistletoe is a collection of four novellas by various authors that have to do with returning to hometowns, 

In “Her Fake Christmas Date” by Victorine Lieske, Jennifer is returning home for Christmas to stay with her mother, and she’s not looking forward to the visit at all. Her best friend growing up, and the “boy next door,” is Shane, who sees her struggling with her suitcase and helps her. She doesn’t at first recognize him; Shane had been kind of geeky and not one of the popular kids. But Shane has grown up too, and Jennifer is at first shocked that the geeky boy she remembers is the handsome, broad-shouldered man who helps her. For his part, Shane had always loved Jennifer, but he recalls the overheard conversation at school where she referred to him as “a nobody” because she wanted to be part of the poplar crowd. But then Jennifer needs a fake date to escape her mother’s matchmaking activities, and Shane agrees to do it.

“A Holiday Rescue” by Tamie Dearen involves Amy Pinkerton, a successful mystery writer who is spending Christmas week at a cabin in Wyoming to write the next book in her stated-based mystery series. She’s caught in a snowstorm, and rescued by Max, once a top country singer but living in seclusion with his daughter since the death of his from cancer. At first Max thinks Amy is one of those husband-chasing women who saw a recent story about him in a music magazine, but he soon learns she’s oblivious to his fame. Romance ensues.

In “A Second Chance for Romance,” Grace is a single mother who unintentionally moves into an apartment across from Sam, who once dearly loved Grace. She opted for the more glamorous boyfriend (a mistake), while he never married. He now owns a car repair shop, which Grace will shortly find herself in great need of. And both Grace and Sam will discover that second chances for romance do happen.

“The Billionaire’s Perfect Match” by Annie Houston is about a professional matchmaker, Aurelia James, media-famous for finding mates for wealthy people. On a plane home for Christmas, she encounters Lander Perry, an old friend from her childhood, who’s not familiar with her work or her fame. They discover their parents have been traveling together and are planning to share part of the holidays together as well. Aurelia and Lander will find themselves thrown together more than they might have expected, until Aurelia’s firm has a crisis involving hacked files. 

Love, Snow, and Mistletoe is four stories, four different authors, but each involving some idea of going home again. 

Top photograph via Freestocks and Unsplash. Used with permission.