TITLE: The Christmas Cookie Collection
SERIES: Twilight Texas
AUTHOR: Lori Wilde
PUBLICATION DATE: 10/29/13
ORDER LINKS: Amazon| B&N
BOOK SYNOPSIS: There’s a legend in Twilight, Texas. It says that if on Christmas you sleep with kismet cookies under your pillow and dream of your one true love, he will be your destiny.
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.
REVIEW: I loved each of these wonderful stories which is the perfect romance collection for the holiday season. Each of these stories revolves around a member of the Christmas Cookie Club that are having a hard time around the holidays due to losing someone that they truly cared about or have yet to find their true love.
The first story involves Carrie who hates the holidays because her high school sweetheart, Mark, left her after having their marriage annulled eight years ago. She never has gotten over the pain of that event and has recently found out that a reality television show is coming to Twilight to prove that their first love legend is only fiction. To Carrie’s horror, she learns that the host of Fact or Fiction will be in Twilight as well and is none other than her ex-boyfriend, Mark.
Mark has never gotten over his relationship with his high school sweetheart, Carrie and is hoping that coming to Twilight will help him finally get over her or to make amends. He never expected the feelings that he had for her to come rushing back to him the moment he laid eyes on her. The only thing is that Carrie wants nothing to do with him and is avoiding him at every turn. Can he convince her to give their love another chance?
This was one of my favorite stories out of all of them. Carrie never has gotten over the love of her life and the holiday season only reminds her of what she had lost. They married right after high school and Carrie ended the relationship after learning that Mark was accepted to a big college and she never wanted to stand in the way of him pursuing his dreams. She didn’t want him to stay in Twilight if he had the opportunity for bigger and better things just because he was with her. Very sweet story and I loved that they never stopped caring for each other and that love will always find a way.
The second story involves Raylene, the owner of the Horny Toad Tavern, who is just as bitter about the holidays as Carrie. Raylene is having a hard time around Christmas because her husband left her a year ago after learning that she had a child before they were together and she had given that child to the wealthy grandparent’s of the father. She has never forgiven herself for that decision and now she has lost the only man that she has ever loved.
A mysterious young woman comes into town and ends up on Raylene’s doorstep looking for a job but is really there for a different reason. Shannon Dugan has come to Twilight to learn more about the mother that had left her behind and see if she can build a relationship with the only remaining family that she has left. Shannon gets more than she bargained for when she meets Nate Deavers, a man that would do anything to show Shannon that family isn’t the only thing that she can have while she is Twilight. Shannon now has the opportunity to make a home in Twilight and find that everything that she has ever wanted has been waiting for her in this small Texas town.
I think that Raylene’s story was the best because it dealt with two people finding something that they had always been searching for. Raylene never forgave herself for giving Shannon to her paternal grandparents because she felt that since they were wealthy they could provide her with a better life. Shannon grew up with a silver spoon but never really had the love that she needed from her grandparents and recently had her heart broken from a two-timing con man. I loved Nate in this story because once he saw Shannon, that was it for him. It was love at first sight and he treaded carefully as to not scare her away from the possibility of a relationship with him. Shannon was afraid to love again after her last disastrous relationship but I loved how caring and considerate Nate was with her. Was so glad that everyone found their happy ending in this story and Raylene was able to find the love that she once thought that she had lost.
The third story is Carrie’s and it was a cute one. Carrie has always been wanting a family of her own but after a car accident as a teenager, she learned that she could never have a child. This fact prevented her from having a true relationship because the jerks that she dated before ran when they learned that she would never be able to conceive. Happy with her successful bakery, Carrie yearns for something more when Eli walks into her shop one day. Eli, is a face from her past, a high school crush that she never forgot about and neither did he.
Eli is a widower raising four kids of his own and has heard great things about the bakery in Twilight. So he entered Carrie’s bakery on a mission to have her make a birthday cake for his teenage daughter, never expecting to find the girl that he once kissed behind the high school bleachers working there. The two of them have a second chance at love but have to face a few obstacles along the way. Great story but I would have loved their story to be just a little bit longer.
The last story in this collection is called Grace and involves Jesse and Flynn Calloway. On Christmas Eve, they venture out into the snowy night to bring presents to a family who wouldn’t have much of a Christmas otherwise. Flynn is nine months pregnant with their first child and could give birth at any time so they try to rush home so Flynn won’t be out in the cold for very long. On the way home, Flynn and Jesse get separated and Flynn is involved in a car accident and Jesse will do whatever it takes to get to his wife and unborn child. Very short tale but the perfect ending for this collection.
Lori Wilde is a great writer and knows how to write fabulous small town romances that will tug at your heart strings. I love her Twilight, Texas series and I think that The Christmas Cookie Collection will be a book that you can read over and over again this holiday season.
Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
