Summing up my Christmas Spirit and setting up a new year of Series-ous Reading

 First off, I hope everyone had a good holiday season and a very Happy New Year (despite the ongoing health crisis).

A good part of keeping my spirits bright was the Christmas Spirit readathon, hosted by Michelle Miller at Seasons of Reading. My TBR for this challenge was small but wonderfully sweet.

The first book that I completed here was Christina Lauren’s In A Holidaze  , which I heard quite a bit about and it was all good indeed.

Our leading lady is Maelyn, who finds herself stuck in a time loop that has her reliving Christmas week with her family and their longtime friends, especially a pair of brothers, one of them she’s had a secret crush for years.

With only one person in the group that she can safely confide in(Benny, a sweet natured stoner), Maelyn has to figure out how to appease the powers that be to get back to her regular life without any dire consequences.

Yes, part of Maelyn’s dilemma involves the potential love triangle between brother Andrew and Theo but it’s also about making changes to her life for the better in other ways while improving the status quo for the rest of this gang of friends and family who gather together for a beloved shared experience annually.

This is the first time that I’ve read a Christina Lauren novel and given the storytelling charms that floated off the pages, it won’t be my last.  This had a Christmas movie vibe in the best sense of the term:

I also enjoyed A Candlelight Christmas  by Susan Wiggs and planned to dive into a cozy mystery collection but wound making a switch for a brand new release which also has a Christmas movie vibe to it as well.

The Holiday Swap is a debut novel by Maggie Knox that combines twin sisters, romance and baking show behind the scenes drama.  Charlie Goodwin is the co-host of a popular baking show called Sweet and Salty with her obnoxious TV partner Austin truly living up to his half of the title.

While filming their holiday special ( and hoping to get her own solo series), Charlie has a minor accident that impairs her sense of smell and taste. Knowing full well how Austin would take advantage of this situation, she calls her identical twin sister Cass to change places with her until filming ends.

This isn’t an easy decision for Cass, who is running the family bakery in their hometown alone for the first time and is in the middle of a breakup with her longtime boyfriend Brett, who is being denser than a fruitcake about this.

While Charlie agrees to handle Brett and Cass has at least one person on the Sweet and Salty set in the know to help her out, both sisters find that the life their sibling is leading is harder than it looks. 

Not to mention that each of them find unexpected romance that could be perfect but for the fact that neither man knows which sister is which.

This was a nicely done story that rang all the right holiday bells and I look forward to their next seasonal book(Maggie Knox is a pair of writers working together, much like Christina Lauren, interestingly enough!). 

Publishing plans  are already set for next fall with All I Want for Christmas being a reality show romcom plot. Sounds like a great holiday read to tune into:

Meanwhile, I finished up the last of my Culinary Cozy Feast selections for the Series-ous Reading challenge . 

Joanne Fluke’s Wedding Cake Murder finally has small town baker and part time detective Hannah Swenson get married yet not to either one of her long running boyfriends Mike or Norman. Instead she weds Ross Barton, an old college flame who became a film director ( he first appeared in Cherry Cheesecake Murder).

Not only is she getting married , Hannah is set to appear on Food Channel’s Dessert Chef Competition (her younger sister Michelle sent in an application for her secretly!) and by winning the first challenge, the rest of the show is now going to be filmed in her hometown!

That leaves Hannah’s eager to be in charge mother Delores in place to make all of the wedding plans,a dubious benefit at best. What truly is an advantage is an old family friend who grew up with the head judge of the dessert competition, picky Alain Duquesne, and knows his favorite flavors.

Hannah is happy to have that extra bit of help and even resorts to wearing her wedding clothes to serve up a specially themed wedding cake to the judging panel. That cake turns out to be a solid win but proves to be Alain Duquesne’s last sweet sensation in this life:

When Alain is found dead in the freezer by Hannah’s sister, she naturally feels honor bound to find the killer but can she do so while trying to win the competition and not be late for her own wedding in more ways than one?

While I would vastly have preferred Norman to be the groom here(the man is practically tailor made for her!), I guess Ross will do for now. This is a murder mystery series so, hey, we’ll see how long this relationship lasts-not jinxing anything here, I swear!

Otherwise, it was nice to see Hannah have a happy ending in the romance department. While her love life is not always stable, you can count on Hannah to have a good cookie on hand and a mystery to solve in front of her:

So, having finished up my reading challenges for 2021, I feel ready for this new year of 2022 bookish delights.

My thanks to Michelle Miller for keeping these readathons going and I’m already planning my TBR for February’s Winter’s Respite.

As for Series-ous Reading , the theme this year is Sisters in Sleuthing with a range of female detectives from young to young at heart, with modern day and historical settings as well.

My first choice in this category is Murder is a Must  by Marty Wingate, the second entry in her First Edition Library series.

 Newly appointed curator Hayley Burke is still catching up on the Golden Age mystery women writers that make up the bulk of  Lady Fowling’s collection in her care when she discovers that a rare Dorothy Sayers first edition may be on the library’s shelves.

Unfortunately, the search for that particular title leads to the untimely demise of her new assistant Oona and that makes Hayley have no choice but to learn a few literary lessons to find out who done it.

 I really enjoyed the first book in this series, The Bodies in the Library, and with a third book due out soon entitled The Librarian Always Rings Twice, this seems like a perfect pick. Also, it might inspire to tackle some Dorothy Sayers at last, so a win-win all around indeed: