A Family Under the Christmas Tree

Well, already behind on my reviews for the year! I'm pathetic.

This one kinda turned into a chore for me to read, honestly. Numerous reasons and emotions were rehashed more than once, which got a bit old, and the story is vastly different from the blurb. Here's my own short blurb:

Sophie never intends to get married. Instead, she's bent on proving to her Hollywood family that she has what it takes to be a successful international photographer. When her grandmother summons her home to Washington after hurting herself in a fall, she certainly didn't expect to find that her grandmother's new companion is a massive ten-month-old Bernese mountain dog, and especially not that the dog's best friend is the orphaned nephew of the handsome neighbor. Perhaps her grandmother's insistence that she be the one to come help her during recovery wasn't as innocent as it appeared, but Sophie's not about to fall for that trick. Not even when the orphaned child runs away with her heart.

Just a bit different than what's on the cover, right? She'd already met the neighbors by the time she found the child in the park. But the story does capture the Christmas spirit very nicely. I also liked that, while both characters have difficult family history of different sorts, they don't have massive loads of emotional baggage like many of today's characters end up with. That was a particularly refreshing twist.

All said, it was a cute, light story—but I think I'll stick with Reed's suspense stories.

Also, authors need to start their own hair care line. I'm impressed that Sophie managed to have three scents of shampoo with her for her trip: cinnamon, vanilla, and sunshine.