Snow is falling hard near the picturesque town of Woodstock, Vermont, with its scrumptious bakeries, brightly lit storefronts, and twelve-foot Main Street Christmas tree. Romance is in the air for everybody except spicy Russian Clara Neverov, recently divorced, bitter, and alone for the holidays. As an acclaimed romance author, she revels in her solitary life relying only on Internet book groups for her socialization under a fake American name pulled from childhood memory and her best friend’s photo.
Giving up on Christmas after too many of them alone, she adores the solitary life free from Scrooges and messy entanglements. When a mysterious editor from a Goodreads book group she cares about shares a sad story about being alone for the holidays after his wife passes away, she accidentally invites him to spend them with her.
The only problem is that her snowy country cottage is nowhere close to the magical Santa’s wonderland that she described. In fact, it closely resembles the undergrown Grinch’s lair on a bad day.
The situation goes from bad to worse when Finn Jacobs drops an email that he’s on his way to spend Christmas with her. He doesn’t mention an arrival date and he believes her to be a trim blond bookshop clerk instead of her real identity as an overweight author with unruly espresso hair and black eyes. With some festive holiday intervention, icy roads slam her truck right into his car, where she quickly finds herself desperately scrambling for another false identity, terrified he’ll learn the truth.
When an unexpected storm snows them in while their cars are being repaired, Clara continues the ruse as somebody else with hopes that her online dream man will come to love her as she is and not as the fantasy women in his mind. The only way she can do that is to give him the Christmas of a lifetime.
There is one thing that is for sure, that spending Christmas alone is no longer an option. Lose yourself in this sweet holiday romantic tale of hope, second chances, and forgiveness during the most magical time of the year.
BONUS MATERIAL: Delicious tried-and-true family holiday recipes as seen in the book. Treat yourself to a cheesy chicken crunch-top casserole, dreamy peppermint dark chocolate mochas, a white chocolate peppermint cake, a melt-in-your-mouth pot roast, buttercream frosted cutout cookies, and many more.
The perfect Christmas short story novelette ideal for sweet romance fans of authors like Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, Brenda Novak, Holly Martin, and Jenny Hale.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I would like to thank Booksiren & Vivien Mayfair for allowing me to read and review this Christmas novella.
Clara Neverov is a romantic novelist who hides away from world under an assumed name. She strikes up a friendship with Finn Jacobs through Goodreads online. She invites him to her home tocelebrate Christmas as he's lonely and so is she, but she doesn't actually think he will come. All of a sudden she receives an email to say he's coming. She's hidden who she really is from him, so what happens when his car and her car crash. Will she let him know who she really is or will he just carry on letting her fool him?
I struggled with the book as I couldn't quite understand the characters at the beginning, but as I carried on with the book I began to warm to the storyline, still in 2 minds about both characters and would of been nice to get to know Finn's background a bit more.
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