Unfortunately, this anthology was not my favorite and I can't say I really liked even one of the stories.
Joni's Magic by Mary Lynn Baxter
Lacy Madison is building a life for herself and her 4 yo daughter Joni in Camden, Arkansas; she manages the small town bookstore in the hopes of being able to afford to buy it eventually and shares childcare with her assistant. Lacy is divorced – and shortly after the divorce her ex kidnapped Joni and was subsequently arrested and jailed, and killed in a prison riot. Anyway, life is good and she makes glass lamps for artistic pursuit and to earn extra money, and then she finds a credit card bill at the store and impulsively takes her daughter to return it to Boothe Larson. Boothe was a forest firefighter but his leg got mangled and his friend/partner got killed when a burning tree fell on them. Now he's pretending he's happy holed up as a hermit in a cabin near town. So, Boothe's dog jumps on irrepressible Joni and she hits her head on the wood Boothe is sawing, so Boothe takes her to the hospital where they are told she's ok but needs to be kept overnight. So of course Boothe comes to pick them up in the morning, and Joni starts calling him Boo and wanting to see him and his dog, and asking him to father her, basically. Plus it's Christmas so there are the requisite mistletoe scenes, etc. And they hook up – but will Boothe ever be happy if he's not fighting fires?
I really hope it's just that I'm not this book's target audience, cuz otherwise it's just a horrible story. Boothe gets outraged a lot and uses words like biddies – plus his thoughts are like this “She was exquisite [...] Little pink rosebuds that's what her nipples would be like.... God, but he wanted to touch her. No! He only wanted to be left alone.” Uh-huh. And their sex scene is confusing - “he gloved her warmth”. Oh and so Boothe goes to see a doctor about his crippled leg and is told only therapy can help – so he decides it's hopeless – really? Ugh, anyway, not for me.
Hearts of Hope by Sondra Stanford
Mary Shelton moved to Hope, Texas a few months ago to take a job teaching second grade – she's from a different small town and grew up on a ranch so the lifestyle isn't new to her but she finds it a bit isolated as she hasn't become friends with too many people yet. Now she has to take on the job of directing the school Christmas play as the regular person has had emergency appendicitis surgery and she's the only other teacher with musical talent. Rob Green first meets Mary when his buddy who sells Christmas trees asks him to deliver one to her, and it's super huge and way too big for her apt. They meet again when Rob runs late to pick up his daughter from school and finds her missing – Mary had brought Holly home and left a note at school but he didn't see the note. So it's a meeting full of conflict. But they keep meeting and get closer slowly. Mary evens tells him the reason she moved to Hope – she had had her first real bf not long ago and they were waiting til marriage but one weekend she went home to her grandparents' (who raised her) ranch and he married some other girl who he had got pregnant! (Rob's thought “A rejected virgin!” ummm, yeah) Rob agrees to help her with the stage backgrounds and they spend more time together – but can anything come of it when they agree they don't want to fall in love?
Yup – Rob didn't actually love his wife as they divorced when Holly was 2, but the book tries to make this be a conflict (Mary sees that Rob does NOT have pictures of her in his bedroom and figures it's too painful for him. Really.). I was baffled a lot – like why didn't they just have sets leftover from last year to use? And could someone please tell me why authors always mount the hero on a stallion and the heroine on a mare? I would think it's much more likely they would both be on geldings...Anyway, I guess you could say this book wasn't written for me. Although on a positive note, I did like the emphasis on the poor town struggling to attract a new factory and the difficulties caused by the old one closing 7 months ago.
The Night Santa Claus Returned by Marie Ferrarella
Tim Holt runs a marketing company and is doing research undercover as a mall Santa Claus to find out what toys kids really want (as opposed to what their parents buy them) when he meets 6yo Robbie Lekawski who doesn't believe in Santa Claus cuz he didn't bring him a daddy last year, and cuz there is no snow in California where his mother has just moved him to. When Tim meets the mom, Laura, he falls in love at first sight, and as soon as he gets off work he rushes out to the parking lot and just happens to find her having car trouble. He gives her a jumpstart and follows her home – to make sure she gets there ok surely. Her mom Janka is outside worried when they get there and she likes Tim immediately, getting his help with the Christmas lights and giving him homemade eggnog. Tim even concocts a secretarial job for Laura to get close to her when he finds out she runs her own freelance typing service. When she comes over Tim makes the mistake of saying stuff like doesn't she want to know the age of the man she's going to marry, etc., which puts her off, but what really ruins things is when she finds out that he was just being Santa as a marketing assignment! Will her family convince her that it's ok to try love again? (She got burned when she was 19 and got pg with Robbie before learning that her bf was married.)
This one was better than the first two in the anthology and there were glimpses of Marie Ferrarella's usual style in the middle, but overall I can't say I enjoyed it. And I'm getting really annoyed at all these stories where the moms need a man to stop looking sad or whatever. I'm ok if they need a particular man, or if they want a man, but really, they don't just need any old man to walk into their lives and fix all their problems. And what's with all these romance novels where the father abandons the heroine and their kid and the heroine just takes it – like Laura muses about how her louse of a boyfriend never even checked if she ended up having the baby – seriously, you're allowed to go after the man and TELL him! And you can even get child support – it's an amazing thing!
Basket of Love by Jeanne Stephens
Jeff Eberhart works as an attorney at a hospital and fell in love with Nina Duncan some weeks ago but she's not so eager about his pursuit of her – Nina was badly wounded emotionally when her husband and toddler daughter were killed in a house fire 2 years ago while she was out Christmas shopping. She's recovering now that a woman she works with at this hospital pushed her into a support group for grief but it's still an effort to join the Care and Share group that's donating a food basket to a family in need this Thanksgiving and she isn't ready to see Jeff apart from cafeteria lunches and the like. But when the family's little girl triggers memories of her own daughter and she learns that Jeff was widowed a few years ago too she starts to soften and Jeff ramps up his pursuit. Nina concedes that she's attracted to Jeff and agrees to head a Care and Share committee with him – but he can't get to admit she loves him can he?
I was surprised that I actually liked this one best from the anthology, maybe because Jeff and Nina have the advantage of already knowing each other when the book begins, or maybe cuz it seems a bit more grounded than the others, but there it is. Still not perfect – like when Jeff reasons that “She must feel something for him, or she wouldn't be so threatened by his attempts to get closer to her,” or the way that they make out for the first time while Nina is still shook up over mistaking the other girl for her baby and Jeff's just shared that his wife is dead too. But it does have its bright points, and I really appreciated that even when Nina felt most pessimistic about their rela, when she orders him “I don't think we should talk anymore tonight” it's just the tonight that's in question – a refreshing change from all those heroines who insist they can never see the hero again in case they might fall in love.
