Christmas Carole: A Dickens Holiday Romance (Book 1)

Divorced mother, Carole Kelley, moves to Dickens and hopes to make the perfect Christmas for her two young children, ages 4 and 7. She takes a job as assistant to her cousin at Wil-Bar Toys and focuses on creating the best life for her and the children. Then she meets Jaxon Matthews, Wil-Bar Toys’ attorney, and an exasperating hunk of handsome man.  Jax only wants to complete the priority work so he can escape town for the holidays. He has big plans to disappear for a solitary Christmas. Then he meets Carole, and then Carole’s kids, and those plans disintegrate. Though Carole and Jax both claim to want to avoid romantic entanglements, there is no escaping the magic of the season or the power of a child’s wish stick…

There is never a bad time of year for a feel-good, Christian Christmas story, and “Christmas Carole” does not disappoint! This book is creative and funny, and the characters feel real and enjoyable. The kids are precious. The conflicts and pacing, along with good dialogue, combine to deliver a believable and heart-warming story. Only two things kept this book from a higher score; first, the shorter length limited how much the characters could be developed and how far the storyline, with its subplots and conflicts, could go. Second, the entire book was rife with technical errors, from punctuation and wrong words and names to other issues that further proofreading might have caught. Neither of these issues distract from the wholesomeness of the story. Readers seeking to keep the Christmas spirit alive through the winter won’t go wrong with this enchanting story!

Emerson Matthews