Christmas Book Week Day 2

Two more books for you on Day 2 of Christmas Book Week! I am excited about these books as well, as they were fun holidays reads.  I was given both books in exchange for my honest review. In addition, if you purchase the book from this page, I will receive a small commission!

Today I am sharing Christmas at Silver Springs by Brenda Novak. Learn more about the author and a synopsis of the book below.

BIO: 

Brenda Novak, a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, has penned over sixty novels. She is a six-time nominee for the RITA Award and has won the National Reader's Choice, the Bookseller&Best, the Bookbuyer & Best, and many other awards. She also runs Brenda Novak for the Cure, a charity to raise money for diabetes research (her youngest son has this disease). To date, she's raised $2.5 million. For more about Brenda, please visit www.brendanovak.com.

BOOK SUMMARY:

Come home to Silver Springs for the holidays, where broken hearts learn to love again...together.
So much for forever. When Elle D's rockstar husband ditches her on his way to the top, she takes
her two daughters to her sister's place in Silver Springs for the holidays, hoping the family can heal her broken heart. But comfort comes in unexpected packages when she crosses paths with Tobias
Richardson. The moment Tobias spots Elle, he recognizes a sadness he knows all too well. After spending thirteen years in prison paying for his regretful past, Tobias is ready to make amends, and maybe helping Elle is the way to do it. But offering her a shoulder to cry on ignites a powerful attraction, and a desire neither saw coming.

Fearing her reaction, Tobias doesn't divulge his ex-con status, let alone the shameful details. So when
Elle's ex shows up in Silver Springs and reveals the truth in a bid to win her back, Tobias is sure he's lost her for good. But, just maybe, this Christmas he'll receive the forgiveness—and the love—he deserves.

This is the sixth in a series of Silver Springs books. You can read it as a stand alone, which I really like, for those of us who haven't started at the beginning.  There was enough information to make sense, but now I want to read all five books prior to this one!  I'm not a fan of people who keep secrets, especially as big as the one Tobias is keeping. For me, that is a game changer in a relationship. So from the beginning, I wasn't sure I wanted them to get together. I do enjoy a book where the heroine goes after what she wants, but she waffled around so much that I started to get a bit annoyed. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to a friend (you!)


The second book for today is Christmas from the Heart by Olivia Berg. This was the first holiday book of the 2019 season that I read and I picked very well!

Summary:

USA TODAY bestselling author Sheila Roberts takes readers to a small, snowbound town, where a young woman fights to save her family’s charity that brings Christmas to families in need, and a stranded millionaire loses his heart and finds the true meaning of Christmas.

Sometimes you need to look beyond the big picture to see what really matters

Olivia Berg’s charity, Christmas from the Heart, has helped generations of families in need in Pine River, Washington, but this year might be the end of the road. Hightower Enterprises, one of their biggest donors since way back when Olivia’s grandmother ran the charity, has been taken over by Ebenezer Scrooge the Second, aka CFO Guy Hightower, and he’s declared there will be no more money coming to Christmas from the Heart.

Guy is simply being practical. Hightower Enterprises needs to tighten its belt, and when you don’t have money to spare, you don’t have money to share. You’d think even the pushy Olivia Berg could understand that.

With charitable donations dwindling, Olivia’s Christmas budget depends on Hightower’s contribution. She’s focused her whole life on helping this small town, even putting her love life on hold to support her mission.

When Guy’s Maserati breaks down at the edge of the Cascade foothills, he’s relieved to be rescued by a pretty young woman who drives him to the nearby town of Pine River. Until he realizes his rescuer is none other than Olivia Berg. What’s a Scrooge to do? Plug his nose and eat fruitcake and hope she doesn’t learn his true identity before he can get out of town. What could go wrong?

Author Bio:

Sheila Roberts lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her novels have been published in several languages. Her book, Angel Lane, was an Amazon Top Ten Romance pick for 2009. Her holiday perennial, On Strike for Christmas, was made into a movie for the Lifetime Movie Network and her novel, The Nine Lives of Christmas, was made into a movie for Hallmark . You can visit Sheila on Twitter and Facebook or at her website (http://www.sheilasplace.com).

I so enjoyed this book! I loved the plot, loved the characters and loved that it felt "real" from the very beginning. Both characters had flaws that were revealed early on, so you didn't take sides right away. You learned about both of them, what drove them and what heartaches they had along the way. For me, this made the book feel like I was a character in the story, with both protagonists as friends, who I could see both sides. Loved the ending and the descriptions were spot-on.