Saturday, December 2, 2006

Sugar and Spice by Fern Michaels, Beverly Barton, Joanne Fluke, and Shirley Jump


I believe this was my first Christmas book of the season, and a clunker at that! This book contains 4 short stories or novellas, 1 each by the authors mentioned in the title and seen on the left. I mainly bought the book because I read the Hannah Swenson series by Joanne Fluke and her story had Hannah and some of the other charactors in it, although they weren't the main charactors in this story. I had not read any books by the other 3 authors, although I had heard good things about them.
Fern Michaels - I really enjoyed this story. It was about a man named Guy Moss. His family owns a Christmas Tree farm, although he moved away to CA awhile ago and is a famouse architect now. His mother passed away and he has not really seen his father sinces. He takes the Christmas season off to go home and work on the farm, which his father is not taking care of. At the same time Angie also comes home to help her Mother, and she doesn't have a good relationship with her mother. Gus and Angie meet - and together they help get the farm back in order, fall in love, and repairing the relationships with their parents. Overall - it was a very cute story.
Beverly Barton - I enjoyed this story too. A woman lost her husband 4 years ago and since then she has not been able to move on, she is still very much in love with him. The Christmas season is always very hard for her to get through. She decides to rent a cabin in the mountains and stay there through the Holidays. On the way up the mountain she runs into a very bad snowstorm and crashes her car. Mack, retired from the armed forces and a hermit, happens across Kate and takes her back to his cabin so she has a place to stay and food until the storm stops and the roads are cleared. They are both instantly attracted to each other - but don't want a relationship. As you can imagine, while snowed in they end up falling in love with each other.
Joanne Fluke - I enjoyed this story also. I am also having trouble remembering the charactors names and I don't have my book with me. haha! I believe they are Julie and Matt. So...they are both teachers who work at a boarding school and of course they like each other, they volunteer to stay over the holiday break with the 6 kids who are unable to go home. It appears that the cook didn't leave any dessert and since Julie was good friends with Andrea, she knows that Hannah is a great cook and she calls to see if Hannah could bring her some cookies for the kids. Julie and Matt also try to spend time alone but the 3 boys keep interrupting their time. Hannah figures out why the boys are doing this and everyone ends up happy. (I know - my review probably doesn't make it sound good - but it was a very cute story).
Shirley Jump - This one had me laughing, I really enjoyed it. Nikki is in lust with one of her co-workers, Jake. However Jake has a high position with the company, and Nikki doesn't. However then the owner decides to do a secret santa and Nikki gets Jake's name. Now is her time to let him know just how much she wants him. Lol! It was very much a romance book - but it was very funny.

3 comments:

Angela/SciFiChick said...

I'm in the middle of this one.
I read the Shirley Jump one first (which i loved). Then started from the beginning. I didn't even read the last couple chapters of it. I realized I didn't like the characters! I got so bored with that Fern Michaels story, I'm thinking about taking the book back. I can only hope the other 2 stories are better.

Unknown said...

Angela,
that's a shame! I liked the characters in Fern Michael's story. The one that I liked the least was by Beverly Barton, but it was still enjoyable. Hopefully the other two pick up for you!

nessie said...

I was nev er into those anthologies except for Xmas romances. Its crazy how there is always an exception to every rule.