Title: A Cosy Candlelit Christmas

Author: Tilly Tennant

Genre: Holiday Romance

Summary: 

All Isla wants for Christmas is to be left in peace, but in the Alps there’s potential for romance in every snowflake that falls… 

It’s the week before Christmas and Isla McCoy has just received an unexpected gift: a letter announcing she is due a life-changing inheritance, but only if she’s willing to make peace with the father who abandoned her. 

She has absolutely no intention of making amends, but who could resist an all-expenses-paid trip to the French resort of St Martin-de-Belleville? 

There she meets smooth-talking Justin and nerdy glaciologist Sebastian; two very different men, with two very different agendas. Torn between her head and her heart, Isla finds herself utterly lost in a winter wonderland of her own feelings. 

Surrounded by twinkling candles and roaring log-fires, Isla’s resolve finally begins to melt. But will she learn how to reconnect, not only with a whole new family, but with herself and her heart? 

Review:

Do you live in a place that’s so cold that it hurts your face? I do and my remedy for the coldness, the goosebumps, the sniffles etc is to curl up with a good romance.

This is a good romance. A really good romance. With really good and bad characters within it. Not badly written characters. Just spoiled brats.

It makes me happy to end the year with a couple of books that I have genuinely enjoyed, and can recommend to those who follow this blog.

Tilly Tennant (whose name I love btw) has hit it out of the park for me with this book. Isla is a strong willed character, and stubborn to boot, but willing to give in if it means getting answers.

Sebastian is just a doll. I fell in love with him immediately. I couldn’t help myself. Give me a slightly bumbling, awkward, smart guy any day over an overly butch macho muscle head. I’d fall all over myself for him. Plus I may have a love of glaciers myself, and English men.

Dahlia is another character I couldn’t help but be enamoured with. She doesn’t have a single mean bone in her body, and her kindness from the get-go utterly charmed me. If such a place, with such a caretaker exists as her business I would not hesitate to go there in a moment.

The setting of this book is nicely written, and I could close my eyes a picture a rather different, more picturesque version of snow than what I’ve had to deal with recently. It’s a reminder that seasons do help create beauty, and that warmth can be found in the people around you.

This is a lovely read I would recommend to anyone.

Received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Title: Christmas at Hope Cottage

Author: Lily Graham

Genre: Holiday, Magic, Romance

Summary: In the little village of Whistling, with its butterscotch cottages and rolling green hills, snow is beginning to fall. Christmas is coming, and Emma Halloway is on her way home.

When thirty-year-old food writer Emma Halloway gets dumped then knocked off her bike, she’s broken in more ways than one, and returns to her family’s cosy cottage in the Yorkshire Dales. Emma hasn’t been back in some time, running from her crazy relatives and her childhood sweetheart, Jack Allen.

Emma’s grandmother is determined to bake her back to health and happiness, as the Halloways have done for generations. Surrounded by old friends and warm cinnamon buns, Emma starts to believe in her family’s special talents for healing again. But then in walks Jack with his sparkling hazel eyes, stirring up the family feud between them. 

As the twinkly lights are strung between the streetlamps, Emma remembers just why she fell for Jack in the first place… and why a Halloway should never date an Allen.

The infuriating new lodger, Sandro, doesn’t believe anyone should have to choose between love and family. With a little bit of Christmas magic, can Emma and Jack find a way to be together, or will Emma find herself heartbroken once more?

Review: 

This book was definitely magic, and definitely not what I was expecting it to be. That is awesome, because I love being surprised, and this was a very pleasant surprise.

Emma is different. I don’t really know how to explain but she lacks the sameness that a lot of romantic protagonists have and it’s not a bad thing. She is stubborn, and vulnerable and perhaps a little fractured but without being too overly melodramatic. Something about her just hit all the right notes for me.

Sandro is lovely. He is smooth as butter and he seems to know it too. He is charming but not without flaws and isn’t overly macho.

Her aunt’s are interesting, each with their own individual personality, but all of them on Emma’s side in a way that made me cheer them on, even though I sometimes didn’t agree with some of their manner of showing it.

The plot of this novel was so delicately put together, and I was enraptured with the way Lily Graham writes about these characters and settings. It is vivid, and warm, and at times not without bitterness. The fantasy side of the plot was not heavy handed, and was an enjoyable thread linking the plot together.

This is not really a holiday novel, not in the sense that most holiday books are, oversaturated with Christmas, in fact I would say this could be read throughout the year and I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself picking it up again. This is a book worth reading, and re-reading again.

<b>Received a free copy in exchange for an honest review</b>