A Bramble House Christmas

by CJ Carmichael

October 24, 2015 · Tule Publishing

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This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Allison. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.

Here is Allison's review:

This is the sixth in a loosely linked series of novels about the Carrigans of the Circle
C Ranch.

The story starts off well. Willa and her son, Scout, are driving through a snowstorm to a vacation at the Bramble House B&B. They’re being followed. This sounds ominous, but actually isn’t; the car behind them is driven by Finn, who’s booked a room at the same B&B. He’s driving behind them because Willa is obviously nervous about the weather, and he wants to make sure she gets there in one piece.

In fact, a lot of things about this book made it seem like things were about to get dark, but they never did. The overall tone was optimistic and light, aside from the regular interjections from Willa about dealing with Scout’s cancer treatments, and Finn’s occasional flashbacks to bad points in his parents’ marriage. I kept thinking that this was heading into suspense novel territory (Her ex returns! His mother flies in! The ring is haunted! The great-aunt is evil!) but it just…wasn’t.

As soon as I saw the premise of the book, I wondered how Finn was ever going to recover from lying to Willa (and all their new friends) about his name and his connection to her former patient, who was his father. The fact that he wasn’t lying about his career (book illustrator) didn’t seem like any defense; in fact, he never even tried to use it. The fact that she was not telling people about Scout’s fight with cancer seemed liked a lesser transgression to me, and also to everyone in the book. The story made it clear that Finn’s lie was unforgivable, and only Willa’s generosity allowed her to make that mental leap to forgiveness.

I would love to read a postlude in which she meets his family, the people who originally thought she was a manipulative gold digger. I did enjoy the fact that both of them have realistically screwed up families that they don’t attempt to fix. They just admit that this is how things are, and do their best with it.

Also, how old is this setting? Because having only $100,000 left in medical bills after 2.5 years of pediatric cancer treatments seemed unrealistic, particularly seeing as she didn’t have health insurance after her ex-husband walked out.

Also, these people use texting and Skype, but literally never think to Google any of the questions that come up. This certainly helped the plot move at the author’s control, but struck me as another unrealistic feature of this novel.

There are some odd bits where we get to peek at the “Happily Ever Afters” from the previous novels in the series. I liked the emphasis on realistic HEA: Marshall and Eliza work hard and have occasional disagreements, but are still clearly very happy with their outcome. Sage and Dawson also seem very happy in their dual-career, two-kids marriage – and oh, that chocolate shop!

Only on the third reading did I figure out why Kris Kringle keeps wandering into this book without a logical tie-in, and also why Whitney Alder’s wedding is featured so prominently after the woman herself barely walks across the scene prior to the wedding. A Bramble House Christmas was originally ½ of a larger book, with the other half being Whitney’s story. Kris Kringle plays a pretty big role in that one, if the back cover blurb is to be trusted. The other book is A Christmas Miracle for Daisy by Jane Porter.

So I felt that this book suffered more heavily than most from “let me show off all the happy endings of previous characters!” but most of them in an unobtrusive way. The tone was happy and upbeat. The small child was not merely a plot moppet. If you’re looking for a nothing-bad-really-happens and oh-look-at-the-snow romance novel set at Christmas, this should be exactly your jam.