Book Review - A Royal Christmas

There is a certain antihistamine brand that advertises with the song which proclaims it is the most wonderful time of the year. My husband can attest that this advertisement, regardless of my feelings about the product, chafes my soul like a swimsuit 2 sizes too small. They tease! I’m a fall fan through and through, but that phrase is reserved specifically for Christmas and to use it elsewhere is to deliver false hope. However, there is a silver tinsel light at the end of the tunnel, because fall means the release of the new Melody Carlson Christmas novella. It is the harbinger of Christmas carols to come, the first hopeful glimmer of the season in which I truly come alive! This year’s gift, A Royal Christmas, is a splendid addition to the Carlson Christmas chronicles I so crave. It is like jingling sleigh bells stop in front of my house on the sweltering fall day each year when my Carlson Christmas novella arrives. This one involves law student Adelaide Smith, still mourning the loss of her mother, and whose life is about to be shaken by the news that her father has found her by using a DNA match. And her father is the ailing king of a small Eastern European principality. And also, he hopes to stay alive long enough to meet the daughter he only recently learned he has, hopefully to find in her the heir to rule Montovia.

The relationships woven together through this story are intricate. It’s not your super cozy Christmas novella where someone misinterprets a hug between siblings as competition for romance. Adelaide quickly, but realistically, builds bonds with various members of the royal family and staff members. Some are worth keeping and others are a bit more in the spirit of Krampus than Father Christmas, when nefarious motives come into play. Carlson moves the book forward with a full novel’s character development and storyline in a novella length word count; a skill that left me feeling utterly satisfied and a wee bit bonded with certain characters. And if you know someone who delights in a Christmas novella, allow me to suggest this as a fantastic gift. I will surely reread A Royal Christmas at the height of my Thanksgiving through the new year Christmas novella marathon!

A Royal Christmas by Melody Carlson is available now from your favorite local bookseller or online:

Baker Book House        Christian Book            Barnes & Noble            Amazon

Thank you to the author and publisher for allowing me a copy to read and review. All opinions expressed here are my own and are completely genuine.

Book Review - He Should Have Told The Bees

Love and identity are timeless themes, expressed in every story in some way or another, it seems. Amanda Cox breaks these down in a tale of two women in He Should Have Told The Bees. Beckett Walsh’s father made a comfortable world for his beloved daughter on the farm they shared alone after her mother left them. She was his apprentice and was happy to carry on in his shadow until his death ripped away the security she relied on even more than she had known. Callie Peterson had no such stability in a world without a father and with a mother whose addictions stole any illusion of security. She should have been through living with the weight of her mother’s continued rejection and chaos, but the boundaries she so carefully constructed are torn down again by her mother’s pleas for help. There is no reason why Beckett or Callie should know about the other’s existence, until George Walsh’s trust divides his estate in half between them. Where each woman has struggled for a lifetime to understand who they are and why they weren’t enough for their parents to stay, this pivotal point begins a new search for understanding neither ever expected.

He Should Have Told The Bees is both heart wrenching and soul stirring, as Cox explores issues we all wrestle with, and does it in a manner that has the reader invested from the first appearance of a spunky alien waif in the Walsh Farms apiary. I have to confess that I was listening to an audiobook in which a spunky alien waif pops up in the path of an unsuspecting young woman, so I had to put He Should Have Told The Bees down for a time in order to keep the storylines from getting jumbled together. I was a bit trepidatious, then, when I resumed this book and hoped it wouldn’t be just another iteration of a storyline I had so recently explored. I worried this one might not hold its own against such a similar cast of characters. There was absolutely no cause for concern. He Should Have Told The Bees is its own story, with its own characters, and there is no confusing the two once those relationships between reader and subjects have been forged. And frankly, Katya Amadeus Cimmaron of the Vesper Galaxy is the kind of lovable, spunky alien waif you just want to scoop up and feed cupcakes. With galaxy frosting. And star sprinkles.

Without a doubt, Amanda Cox’s latest release, He Should Have Told The Bees, is a bit of a tear jerker, a bit of an emotional struggle, and a triumph.

He Should Have Told The Bees by Amanda Cox is available now from your favorite local bookseller or online:

Baker Book House            Christian Book            Barnes & Noble        Amazon

Thank you to the author and publisher for allowing me a copy to read and review. All opinions expressed here are my own and are completely genuine.