We Need A Little Christmas by Sierra Donovan
Publisher: Zebra
Release Date: September 27, 2016
As I have been scrambling to catch up on a backlog of reading after pretty much taking November off for writing, I have been trying to get through all of the holiday ones so that you might find something to read with your eggnog, Christmas tree, and fire blazing in the fireplace. What I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks of reading Christmas-themed novels is that it’s not as easy as it looks.
Later this week, I’ll do a list with all of the holiday books, I’ve read and reviewed so you might find a favorite.
Sierra Donovan’s We Need A Little Christmas jumps to almost the top of the list by taking all of the elements that you would expect in a Christmas story and then presenting the story of a family losing a valued member just weeks before the holiday.
Liv Tomblyn returns home to Tall Pine after the death of her beloved grandmother right after Thanksgiving. She, her mother who has busted her knee, and her extremely pregnant sister, have to sort through all of her grandmother’s belongings in order to get the house ready to sell. Amidst the odds and ends, they find a retro silver tree that’s illuminated by a color wheel.
Scott Leroux was the clown in Liv Tomblyn’s high school class. In recent years, he has been helping her grandmother, “Nammy,” with various handyman jobs and they had grown close. So it seems only natural that Scott would continue to help out since neither Liv’s mom or her sister can do much lifting or moving.
A series of events, not always explainable, occurs that force Liv and Scott to spend a lot of time together and they find they are drawn to each other. But what’s the sense of starting something when she has to go back to Dallas right after Christmas?
I liked We Need A Little Christmas. It has a touch of supernatural magic, or maybe that’s just seasonal magic, that adds a sparkle along with credible characters. I am happy to be finding well-written “average guy” kinds of male characters to be populating a lot of romance novels in place of arrogant bad boys. So Scott, with his tendency to joke, his solidness, his willingness to help others, appeals to me.
Liv faces the guilt of not having been home often enough and having believed that there would always be enough time, but seeing her mother with gray hair and injured and her grandmother now passed, she comes to the realization that you have to be there. It’s an important sentiment, especially in a fast-paced rather materialistic society, but it’s not a theme that is bashed over one’s head.
There may have been a few bits and bobs that didn’t work for me, but in the grand scheme they were negligible. I thought We Need A Little Christmas conveyed the spirit of the season with all of its love and nostalgia and family in a special way.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
From Amazon: We Need A Little Christmas
rating: 
(4 butterflies and a ladybug out of 5 butterflies)