Frontier Christmas [Mass Market Paperback]

I purchased this book for Ana Leigh's final story (Lily) in the MacKenzie's series. I enjoyed Grady & Lily's story. There wasn't much to it but it was enjoyable & gave a nice ending to this series. Lily (Cleve & Adee's daughter) had left the Triple M & was working as a Harvey girl in New Mexico in hopes of finding love. Grady is the town sheriff who is raising 3 kids on his own. Lily quickly formed a bond with the children & it didn't take long for her to realize that she loved Grady as well. Be sure you don't miss the rest of the MacKenzie series. This is the best series that I've ever read. I would sure like to be a part of that family. They are the meaning of "family".

Up next was A Time For Angels by Carolyn Davidson. I thought the book was good but not great. I didn't feel the characters had much personality & I couldn't understand how Honey could fall in love with Zachary in basically a matter of hours of re-meeting him. She had met this man 6 months prior when she went to the bank where Zachary was the president & he basically insulted her by suggesting that if she would have sex with him he would give her a loan to pay off her house. With Honey being the pure, innocent person that she was I just couldn't understand how she could fall in love with him after just 1 dinner together. Aside from that this book does have a good storyline. It's not a story I would highly recommend.

The last story in this book is The Long Journey Home by Kate Bridges. I thought the story line for this book was awesome. After just saying their vows Logan is called away to duty before he & Melodie even have a chance to consummate their marriage. Logan doesn't return that night as he has promised & is later pronounced dead. After 2 years Melodie has agreed to marry another man & all of a sudden Logan reappears. Can he capture Melodie's heart once again? I really enjoyed this story.

Overall I would recommend this book for women that like short stories but don't necessarily need the hot & steamy scenes. If that's what you enjoy you won't find much here.

Since the back cover description is already given on this page, I'll skip straight to my review:

Ana Leigh has a lot of fans, but I'm afraid that I'm not one of them. I didn't find THE MACKENZIES: LILY all that great. In fact, I never even finished it. I felt that the heroine was a bit of a nosy shrew, constantly sticking her nose in where it didn't belong and presuming a lot of things that weren't even true. And the hero was a bit of a stuffed shirt. He was so proud that he got quite irritating after a while. I just couldn't really like either of them, so I didn't really care whether they got together or not. Two stars.

I was hoping for a good read from Carolyn Davidson's A TIME FOR ANGELS, as I'd really enjoyed her story "Stormwalker's Woman" from Harlequin's "One Starry Christmas" collection. But I'm afraid that a very annoying hero ruined this story. He was so quick to leap to conclusions without even trying to find out if they were true or not. He just came across as a man with a rod shoved up his...nether regions. And, as another reviewer has stated, the heroine's reasons for refusing the hero were very contrived, even for a romance novel. A shame, as this author has done it better. Two stars.

Kate Bridges' story THE LONG JOURNEY HOME had so much potential, but the delivery left a lot to be desired. First off, it stretched the bounds of believability quite a bit that the heroine took so long to recognize the hero. Even if I believed that my husband was dead, even if it had been two years since I'd last seen him, even if half of his face was scared and he had a beard, I'd still recognize him instantly. It just didn't ring true with me that the heroine didn't recognize him for such a long time. It wasn't like she'd been forced to marry him, it was a love match. Wouldn't she recognize the man that she loved, no matter what the circumstances?

But that wasn't the only problem with this story. After their initial meeting, there was hardly any interaction between the hero and the heroine. This was a situation fraught with tension (considering that the heroine was engaged to someone else), yet the author seemed to shy away from exploring that tension. And the character development was somewhat lacking, as well. I just didn't feel like I knew the characters. I didn't really feel their pain at being seperated. I think this book might have been better if it had been developed into a full-length novel. But the way it is here, it isn't an engrossing read. Two stars.

Most anthologies are a hit-or-miss proposition. Unfotunately, this collection was a miss. There are far better Christmas romance out there. See my list "Christmas romance books worth buying" for a list of my favorites. Skip FRONTIER CHRISTMAS, unless you're a fan of Ana Leigh and want to complete your "Mackenzies" collection.

I have the entire set of Anna Leigh's , "The Mackenzies" and wanted to add this to the collection, since one of the stories is written by Leigh. Compared to the other ones this one's a dud. Sorry

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