Christmas Reads for Your December Escape

December brings my energy to its lowest ebb of the year. But I love December! I love the long, dark nights and the dim light that creeps in by mid-afternoon. I thrill to the sun that borders the horizon. I only want to read and reflect, though there is much more that I must do.

Light reads are so comforting during this time. This is when I indulge in Christmas novels and stories. As you can see from my "Books Read in 2014" list, I have enjoyed Anne Perry's 2014 annual Christmas mystery novel, A New York Christmas. It was a quick read, fun, and yes--go for it--frivolous. I thought it was more interesting than last year's Christmas offering. I didn't know until last month that Anne Perry spends most of the year living in Scotland, though she was not born a Scot.

I then devoured Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron, one in a series of Jane Austen mysteries. Generally speaking, I don't like to read contemporary novelists' fictionalized accounts of long-ago authors, but I did enjoy this one. The first five chapters were stellar, but I thought the middle sagged. But, notice, this fact did not stop me from finishing and enjoying.

I must confess I felt sad when I came to the last page of Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan. A young woman wunderkind in the New York advertising biz travels to the Snow Crystal Resort in what seems to be northern Vermont. There she hopes to escape her horrid Christmas history and sink her teeth into getting a sinking winter and summer resort back on its feet. Although she's successfully protected herself from relationships for years, she surrenders to Jackson O'Neil, the grandson attempting to save the resort. This is HOT contemporary romance. Note! Just one hot pepper. Morgan's incredible talent lies squarely in the niche of creating incredibly moving, loving, sexual scenes. I admit I succumbed, but only because it was plain old HOT contemporary romance, minus the extreme graphics of SUPER-HOT romance. I heartily recommend this novel for the author's skill in crafting such scenes. Very, very well done. Also, I loved the warm extended family that made up the O'Neil clan. Yes, certain themes were overly repetitive. But just scan and flip the pages.

Right now I'm halfway through Daisy Goodwin's The Fortune Hunter, her second novel, which is set in England during the mid-late 1870s. Goodwin is an English author, and is extremely popular in the US. Her first novel was The American Heiress, which I haven't read yet. But I must say that the pages fly by for me in The Fortune Hunter.