Home For Christmas by Jan Ruth

Description

An emotive trio of stories with festive themes.
Rudolph the Brown-Nosed Reindeer
Rick isn’t looking forward to his lonely corporate Christmas, but it’s the season of goodwill and magic is in the air.
An off-beat love story. It’s time Rick wore his heart on his sleeve, or is it too late? Lessons in love from an unlikely source.
Jim’s Christmas Carol
Santa and Satan pay a visit. One brings presents, the other an unwelcome presence.
Paranormal reality. Jim’s played with fire it’s time he got his comeuppance, but from who?
Home for Christmas
Deck the halls with boughs of holly. Fa la-la la-la, la-la la-la. Tis the Season to be jolly…
Romantic-comedy. Pip might accidentally find her true vocation, but the folly of her fibs are about to catch up with her.

Karen’s Magic Review

Sometimes I enter things on Facebook, or in order to get more likes for my page, I have to ‘like’ other pages in return. I would imagine this was how I came across this author. Jan Ruth popped up in my newsfeed and was offering this book as a free download.

I already had the next seven reads planned and wasn’t looking for another one. As it was a Christmas story, I thought I might as well get into the spirit.

Bearing in mind most authors I connect with are in America, I went over to her page to find out who she was. To my surprise she lived in north Wales, as I do. I live on a small island and as we look inland our backdrop is the Snowdonia mountain range. This is where Jan was and a lot of her stories are based there. I was delighted. It’s great to read a story from your own patch.

The first tale, Rudolph the Brown-Nosed Reindeer tells the story of Jim, as mentioned in the description. He is mourning the loss of his girlfriend and thow they both had different ideas of how to do Christmas. They were probably incompatable any way.

Jim is forced to go on an away-day with his job for moral and teambuilding  purposes. It’s the last thing he wants to do as he heads up to a hotel the Snowdona mountains. The author has a great way of describing those work colleagues most of us have encounted. I’m not going to giveaway anything except its story with a twist in the end, and I love those!

The next story, Jim’s Christmas Carol was hillarious. At one point I chuckled out loud. Jan Ruth is good at characters, and a family Christmas has all the ingredients for things to go wrong. An excellent tale!

Finally, the last of her ‘three long stories’ is Homes for Christmas, and tells of Phillipa who has broken up with her boyfriend and returns to the home and village she grew up in while her parents are on a cruise. She gets involved in the village play, and I now recognise how good the author is at character building. Of course, there is an old flame to encounter. With some twists and turns and funny incidents, the story reaches a satisfactory climax.

I love finding new authors, and as I looked at her other books, I couldn’t resist using my Kindle Unlimited membership for this one. I might have to move around my reads to accomodate it.

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Description:

Imagine living eighteen years of your life around a mistake…
Caroline Walker’s daughter suffers a horrific riding accident. Her distraught parents wonder if she’ll ever walk again, let alone ride. And when Mollie’s blood group is discovered as rare, her husband offers to donate blood. Except Ian is not a match. In fact, it’s unlikely he’s Mollie’s father.
Eighteen years previously, Caroline had a one-night stand with Irish rock star, Rory O’Connor. Caroline fell pregnant. Deeply flawed boyfriend, Ian, was overjoyed. And Caroline’s parents were simply grateful that their daughter was to marry into the rich, influential Walker family.  Caroline turns to Rory’s friend Connor; and although his almost spiritual connection with his horses appears to be the balm she needs, Caroline cannot forget Rory, or her youth – both lost to a man she never loved. Eighteen years on and after surviving cancer Rory lives as a virtual recluse in the Welsh mountains. Through his well-meaning but interfering sister, he is shocked to discover he has a teenage daughter. Or does he? As the truth begins to unravel, Caroline finds herself faced with a complex trail of moral dilemma. Someone has made a terrible mistake… someone is going to get hurt…

Amazon UK
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