Review: The Christmas Cookie Collection

The Christmas Cookie Collection

About the Book:

The New York Times Bestselling Author of The First Love Cookie Club returns to Twilight, Texas,with one brand-new story and three stories never before in print!

There's a legend in Twilight, Texas. It says that if you throw a penny in the fountain, you will live  happily ever after with your high school sweetheart.

Carrie, Raylene, Christine, and Flynn are all members of the Christmas Cookie Club. Each has a story to tell, and each discovers the miracles of the season and the power of love.

Carrie: Reconnects with her high school sweetheart . . .the only man she's ever loved.

Raylene: Discovers that the daughter she gave away at birth is living right in Twilight . . .

Christine: Has given up on love . . . until the man of her dreams walks through her shop door.

Grace: It's Christmas Eve and Flynn and Jesse Calloway are thrilled to be expecting a new baby. Then Flynn's car hits a patch of ice, and Jesse must move earth . . . and heaven . . .to save her and their unborn child.

My Comments:

If you are a fan of Lori Wilde's Twilight Texas books, you'll enjoy this sweet Christmas edition.  All these stories are short, all have steamy scenes (except Grace) and all are just a little too over-written for my taste.  Still, if you like sweet Christmas romances, you may like these.  Grade:  C+

A Cowboy for Christmas

A Cowboy for Christmas: A Jubilee, Texas Novel

About the Book:

The third installment in New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde's series set in Jubilee, Texas, gives readers a perfect present-a cowboy for Christmas!

My Comments:

It has been my experience that Christmas romance novels are short and very sweet, kind of like this cover.  A Cowboy for Christmas is an exception to that rule.  Yes, it has a happy ending but getting there is on the gritty side.  

Her husband was a solider, killed in Afghanistan.  Imagine her surprise when she finds he left his insurance, indeed his entire estate to his half-brother, not to her and their son.  Still, that's what happened, so she set out to make a new life for them with what they had.  She lives in Jubilee, Texas which is the scene of a another book I recently reviewed.  She is close to her mother-in-law and her friends.  She loves to bake.  Then one day, several months after her husband died, who showed up at her door but his half-brother?  

He is determined to take care of her; she is determined not to let another man swallow her the way her late husband did.  Both need to be needed; both want to be loved, and in the end...

If found this book to be much more realistic than The Cowboy and the Princess.  I liked both of the main characters and found the story to be more substantial than many romance novels as it dealt with issues between parents and adult children and with the problems of soldiers returning home.  

There is pre-marital physical intimacy but the scenes are not the most descriptive out there.  

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley.  Grade:  B.  

The Cowboy and the Princess: My Review

The Cowboy and the Princess

About the Book:

Welcome back to Jubilee, Texas, where New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde romantically pairs a beautifully princess with Texas royalty: a rugged, totally hot, real-live cowboy! Wilde’s Jubilee novels celebrate homespun, small-town love—a treat for readers of the contemporary romance fiction of Sherryl Woods, Susan Wiggs and Susan Mallery—and her sexy cowboy heroes are sure to make Linda Lael Miller fans swoon. Nobody can resist these handsome, muscular, outdoorsy American icons, especially not the royal runaway bride in The Cowboy and the Princess, who unexpectedly finds her heart’s true desire in blue jeans smack-dab in the middle of America’s Southwest. You won’t want to miss the fireworks when these two worlds romantically collide!

My Comments:

Most romance novels cannot be accused of excessive realism, and Lori Wilde's The Cowboy and the Princess  is no exception; as a matter of fact is is more unrealistic than most.  He is a loner, but a man with lots of friends who love him.  He doesn't want to settle down and doesn't think he is worthy of being loved.  However, he has a way with horses.  She's a princess from some small European country.  She is supposed to marry the prince of another small European country in six weeks.  It is a political match, not a love one, and she wants just one chance to be "normal" before her wedding.  Her chance comes when the daughter of the ex-President of the US gets married.  She goes to the compound to attend the wedding, and, with the help of the  President's daughter, slips away from her bodyguards.  She is on the highway hitchhiking when he picks her up.  He takes her to a small town in Texas and she settles in for six weeks, taking a job in the store of a friend of his--oh, and he and she decide to have a fling.  Each tells the other that s/he doesn't want anything more than a short fling, but along the way....  In the end they get their happily ever after but the ending is even more far-fetched than the beginning.  

Despite the far-fetched beginning and ending the middle is a really good story with strong characters.  Anne has spent her whole life wanting to do what other kids do--get dirty, go to carnivals, eat concession stand food, but she was a princess and had to act like one, all the time.  It must have been fun for Brady to see the wonder in her eyes as she experience all these new things in Texas.  He was obviously curious about where she came from but he gave her the space she needed.  It takes them a while, but eventually they are intimate before marriage, and while this is not the most explicit book I've ever read, I'd by no means put it in the "clean" romance category.  

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via Edelweiss.  I was not obligated to write a positive review.  Grade:  B 

Also by Lori Wilde:


My Review of The Welcome Home Garden Club
My Review  of All of Me.