Coming Home for Christmas Review

Title: Coming Home for Christmas

Author: Fern Michaels

Publisher: Kensington

ISBN: 9781420124682

Website: http://www.keningtonbooks.com

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Silver Bells - 3/5 - Mandy’s life as an actress in California has lost its luster.  In order to find meaning again, she decided to return to her hometown.   And maybe reconnect with her old flame, Hank Anders, as well.  Hank came home to visit his brother’s family for Christmas but, ended up babysitting his nephews while his sister-in-law was having a nervous breakdown.  When he discovered that Mandy has returned, maybe the holidays was getting better after all.

To quote Mason from the book in regards to Hank and Mandy’s relationship: “You do . . . work fast.”  Took the words right out of my mouth.  The plot moved way too fast for me.  I understand that they were high school sweethearts, but after 15 years, people change and things happen.  I mean that after 2 days, Hank asked her to marry him and she said yes.  What bother me more was that he almost married someone else but declared to Mandy that he has always loved her.  Just like Mandy, I was kind of turned off by his admission.  And when the final chapter switched to Hank’s sister-in-law POV, it felt out of sync.  This short story was filled with too much drama to really be paced well.

    

Snow Angels - 4/5 - Olympic skier Max Jorgenson wanted to be alone to wallow in despair during the holiday season.  His pity party was interrupted when Grace Landry and 2 little girls arrived, lost, on his doorstep.  While they waited for the snowstorm to blow over, will Grace bring the Christmas spirit back to his Scrooge’s heart?

This was cute and simple.  Even though this story took over a short span of time too, the story worked.  I’ll admit that there was not a lot of romance but I like it.  It gave them time to talk and get to know one another before jumping into a relationship.  Grace was an admirable heroine and Max had a good character development.  It was just sweet.

Holiday Magic - 2/5 - Continuing from the previous novella, Stephanie Marshall has her chance to strike out on her own.  She now managed the store at Max’s ski resort.  But Eddie O’Brien was making it difficult.  After 3 dates, Eddie made himself scarce and to discourage her, he made sure Stephanie know who the boss was.  But after a while, Eddie began to realize his feelings had changed.  Will Stephanie give him another chance to redeem himself?

  

I loved everything except the hero.  I did not like him.  I couldn’t care less about his reason for being a bachelor after he treated Stephanie badly.  He knew her back history and to treat her with such hostility was uncalled for.  She has done nothing to deserve it.  It was his own mental issues.  Luckily, he appeared for about 20% of the time.  The story mainly focused on Stephanie and her close friend, Melanie.  So, I wouldn’t call it a romance.  It was more of a beautiful story about 2 good girl friends.  So, it wasn’t exactly what I expected.  And the ending felt incomplete.  So this was my least favorite of the 3 stories.

After everything, I would suggest skipping this collection of Christmas novellas.  Unless you are a fan of Fern Michaels, there are better holiday books out there.  The only thing I did like was the fact the stories were clean.  It was a quick read and there were good parts.  But it just was not my cup of tea.