nexpected Kisses

Christmas represents everything Andi Williams is supposed to have, and doesn't. Running away to a remote mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies sounds like the perfect way to escape, until a mix-up finds her sharing a villa with sexy, rough around the edges, Colin Hartford.

Colin's determination to enjoy the holiday he's missed for the last five years sweeps Andi into a season of joy that she's not sure she's ready for. Can Andi open herself up to everything the holidays have to offer...including love?

Hidden Kisses

Morgan's looking to hide out from her life, but what she's not counting on is Bo, the handsome and rugged mountain guide at The Lodge who has his own heartache to bear and his troubled little girl who sneaks her way into Morgan's heart.

Opening her heart again means opening herself up to the hurt that threatened to destroy her once. But if she can let down her guard long enough, Morgan might just see that everything she's been looking for is right in front of her.

If it's not too late.

Mistaken Kisses

Eva Andrews would do anything for her best friend Andi, especially if it means dropping everything to plan a last minute wedding at Castle Mountain Lodge.

But planning the perfect wedding isn't proving to be easy, especially when Jeff Michaels, the rugged and all too good-looking ranch hand, is determined to get in her way.

Despite the fact that Jeff knows how to push all of Eva's buttons, there's an attraction between them that can't be denied. But Eva's sworn off men and even if she did allow herself to act on the feelings that keep growing stronger, there's the small matter of her 'fake date' in the way.

Castle Mountain is known for bringing couples together, but can Eva and Jeff get out of their own way long enough to see what they could have--together?

Unexpected Gifts -- Book 1 of Castle Mountain Lodge

Unexpected Endings -- Short story from Castle Mountain Lodge series (#2.5)

-- Elena Aitken

This was a short and sweet Christmas-y fluff piece that has a cute, even if predictable plot device:

Due to some tragic and heart-breaking events in her recent life, Andi Williams runs off to Castle Mountain Lodge to escape the holiday cheer all around her. But upon arrival, the lodge had some mix-ups and her room reservation is no longer available. To the rescue is an old friend, Colin Hartford, who offers up one of the rooms in the villa suite he's staying in with hopes that he'll be able to get to know Andi a little bit better and maybe even change her bitter outlook on Christmas.


Setting aside the fact that I personally, would probably NOT agree to stay in a villa suite with a stranger, once again, once the story got going it was rather cute. Sure, it tries to make Colin out to be a long time friend, but technically, he's a friend of Andi's ex and they've met all of one time. So he's still technically a stranger. Given my own personal paranoid self, I probably would have just taken up the hotel's offer of sleeping on a couch in the staff residency.

But that's me and that's probably why I'm still single after all these years.

And then there's that one last stretch for romantic angst at the end of the book that probably could have been avoided if everyone would have just stopped being sneaky or secretive or too bothered to talk to each other...

Nonetheless, setting ALL of that aside, I found the book serviceable as a holiday romance. And then I found out that there's a "Steamy" version of this book (and subsequent books in this particular series) and wondered if I might have enjoyed that one more given the lack of sexy times in this version (not that I'm a nympho or anything...).

As for Unexpected Endings, it just felt like an unnecessary short story addition.

I read it because it was included in the Kindle book version at the end of Unexpected Gifts, detailing some extra stuff about Andi and Colin. It could have probably just been added as an epilogue? Or something?

I'm not a Scrooge, but I also don't often celebrate much in terms of holidays either.

Even so, I decided that I'd start the Christmas season today by jumping into a short Christmas read to gear up those holiday feels and cheers.

Unexpected Gifts is an Amazon Kindle freebie I stumbled across (though I can't remember HOW I stumbled across it).  It sounded cute and has some good, positive reviews, so I went ahead and added it to my library and then started reading a bit of it tonight right before dinner.

I will probably have it completed by the time I get off work tomorrow morning since it's a rather short novella length book.  And while it's so far proving to be a typical contemporary romance fluff piece, I'm simply reading it for the light-hearted, warm tinglies you get when you think about Christmas and holiday and stuff.

Anyway, I may or may not read a few more Christmas themed books in the coming month.  I've got two other Amazon Kindle freebies that are Christmas themed and sounded cute.

Hope everyone's having a great holiday season so far, from Thanksgiving into Christmas!

I also wanted to take this moment to give my Thanks to the bookish community here (though I'm a little late for Thanksgiving) for letting me be a part of such a wonderful group of individuals.  I've enjoyed following everyone's blogs, reading reviews and posts and, in general, getting to know everyone... even though I don't often comment.

Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts and also thank you for reading and commenting on mine as well.  It feels good to know that there is a community of people who love reading as much as I do and like reading about what I have to say about books--I don't have as many bookish friends in Real Life and I often find myself wanting to explode with excitement over book releases, book events, book characters, and book plots, but no one around me actually understand my excitement or my rants.

I feel like the above book title is fitting, since I never expected to become a part of any kind of bookish/blogging community when I first started posting reviews on GR--I've never been a very social person in Real Life and had only thought to share my thoughts on various books and then move on.  Then I came here to BL, started following random bloggers, and the rest is history.

So thank you all for being here and making me feel welcome in this community!

Get 'em while they're FREE!!!