Christmas Camp by Karen Schaler

From the screenwriter of the Netflix Original viral hit, A Christmas Prince, comes another heartwarming holiday story about a beautiful Grinch who’s determined to get her dream job even if it means spending a week at a Christmas Camp where she discovers an unexpected love.

Haley Hanson’s idea of the perfect Christmas is escaping to the Caribbean to work so she can avoid all the traditional Christmas distractions. Over the years, she’s sacrificed her personal life to climb the corporate ladder at a prestigious Boston advertising agency. Now she just needs to land a coveted Christmas toy company account to make partner. But first, her boss, Larry, thinks she needs a holiday attitude adjustment, so he ships her off to a Christmas Camp at Holly Peak Inn to help her find her Christmas spirit.

Arriving at the charming mountainside inn, Haley meets the owner’s handsome son, Jeff, and feels an instant spark, but resists the attraction, refusing to be distracted from her goal of doing all the required Christmas tasks as fast as possible so she can get back to work.

At first Haley struggles with all the traditional Christmas Camp activities. It’s not until she finally allows herself to slow down, live in the moment, and let Christmas back into her heart, that she begins to grow closer to Jeff. But when he finds out Haley’s come up with a plan to help his dad save the struggling inn while he’s been trying to convince his dad to sell it, their relationship takes a serious holiday hit. Now it will take the magic of the season to bring these two hearts together.

Book 1
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Avon Romance

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Ruthie – ☆☆☆
This is a very sweet and Christmas-rich tale. I felt that the majority of romance was about the season rather than the people, although Ben and Gail finding each other was very sweet. Haley and Jeff have interesting relationship potential, but I did find his love of family to be a little over the top. As a grown professional man, I found it difficult to imagine that years later, he was still that affected by his mother's death, and yet he wanted his father to leave their family home.

I loved the idea of the Christmas Camp and the fun activities that went on there. The other guests were fun, and I could definitely see this as a great Christmas movie. It certainly put me in the mood for the upcoming festive season.

Karen Schaler is a three-time Emmy Award–winning storyteller, author, screenwriter, journalist and national TV host. She has written original screenplays for Netflix and Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies. Her travels to more than sixty-five countries as the creator and host of Travel Therapy TV inspired Christmas Camp. All of Karen’s stories are uplifting, filled with heart and hope.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Christmas Camp (Christmas Camp #1) by Karen Schaler to read and review.

The Color of Love by Sharon Sala

He might be winning her heart before she even knows who he is...

Welcome to Blessings, Georgia, the small town with a big heart! Anyone from a small town can tell you that gossip never stays quiet for long. The biggest news lately is Ruby Dye: she's been receiving gifts from a secret admirer. But Ruby isn't sure she can trust this newfound happiness. Nobody knows the dark secrets she keeps about her life before she arrived in Blessings. Is this the beginning of a would-be romance, or is she the target of something more sinister?

Everyone admires Ruby and her determination to do the right thing, especially local lawyer "Peanut" Butterman. He's finally ready to tell her how he feels. But when trouble arrives on Ruby's doorstep and their little town is threatened, Peanut may have to prove himself in ways he never imagined.

Book 5
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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Veronica – ☆☆☆☆
Ruby Dye is such an amazing woman I was thrilled she finally got her own story. Ruby has a secret admirer who has been sending her gifts. Local lawyer and Ruby’s friend, Peanut Butterman, is scheduled to have lunch with Ruby to confess his feelings but Ruby’s ex shows up and bad things happen and get in the way.

Ruby and Peanut’s romance is simple and beautiful, with lots of other little stories of Blessings woven through it. Ruby’s issues with her ex and his family, a single mum and her kids who have fallen on hard times, the passing of a local man who leaves a large estate, and more all meander around Ruby and Peanut’s love story. I also enjoy when the misbehaving characters in these stories get what is coming to them. It is so satisfying.

The Color of Love is a charming story. I was wondering if this would be the final story in Blessings, Georgia but a hint at the end of the wonderful epilogue suggests there will be more.

Also Available in the Blessings, Georgia Series

Book 0.5
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For reviews & more info, check out our Count Your Blessings post.

Book 1
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For reviews & more info, check out our You and Only You post.

Book 2
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For reviews & more info, check out our stop on the I’ll Stand by You Blog Tour.

Book 3
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For reviews & more info, check out our Saving Jake post.

Book 4
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For reviews & more info, check out our A Piece of My Heart post.

Sharon Sala, who has also written under the name Dinah McCall, has 85-plus books in print, published in four different genres—Romance, Young Adult, Western, and Women’s Fiction, and her Young Adult books have been optioned for film. She has been named a RITA finalist seven times by Romance Writers of America, and in 2011 they named her the recipient of the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her books are New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly bestsellers and published in many different languages. She lives in Oklahoma, the state where she was born.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of The Color of Love (Blessings, Georgia #5) by Sharon Sala to read and review.

Dear Life by Meghan Quinn Blog Tour

Four lives. Four stories. Four sets of letters. Four brave souls in need of guidance while facing life's greatest challenges.

The anonymously published Dear Life program is designed to help them step outside of their comfort zones, face their obstacles, and relinquish their demons...and prove their existence.

With their lives teetering between wanting more and losing it all, all four souls dive into the program as a New Year’s resolution, sending them on a crazy, life-altering journey.

Dear Life,

Please be kind.

Yours truly, Hollyn, Jace, Daisy, and Carter.

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Veronica – ☆☆☆☆☆
Hollyn, Daisy, Jace, and Carter meet when they attend a local program called Dear Life, which is designed to help them through their hard times.

Hollyn and Jace are both dealing with grief. We begin with Hollyn whose story is my nightmare. Jace's story tore my heart apart. His struggles had me crying so hard but then again, so did everyone else's.

Daisy is the positive, bright spark of the group. Eager to experience life and all it has to offer. Carter is drawn to Daisy's honesty and naivety, but he is a bad boy and nothing like Daisy. Carter himself feels short changed by life and is becoming bitter and negative as he sees his dreams slip away.

The story is told from the point of view of each of our characters. It is always clear whose point of view we are reading and the way the story is written allows us to get into their minds and hearts. At the end of each meeting of the Dear Life program the attendees have to write a letter to life. I loved reading their letters, but I confess Carter's succinct words were my favourite.

Getting past their issues so they can live their dreams and happily ever afters is a difficult journey for our heroes and as a reader, I was all in on their emotional journey and I was easily able to lose myself in their world.

Dear Life is absolutely superb, amazing, brilliant – I can't come up with enough good words. I feel like I've already read the best book of the year and we still have 51 weeks to go. Ms. Quinn has set the bar exceptionally high with Dear Life. It is a must read.


Angela – ☆☆☆☆☆
I am so glad I waited until the weekend to read Dear Life. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to hold the tears back had I read it at work, and I would have lost sleep had I started it after work because I couldn’t put it down. While Meghan Quinn has developed quite the reputation for her romantic comedies, it was easy to see within those books that she could (and did) tackle serious issues. Even knowing that, I still was not prepared for the emotional toll Dear Life took on me as I watched this group of four learn to trust themselves and one another, even when it hurt.

Death. Desertion. Servitude. Solitude. These are the things that bring Hollyn, Jace, Carter, and Daisy to the Dear Life program as they’re each on a precipice and have to figure out how to face the world before them. A world that is changing with or without them. The idea is that by embracing their past and letting it go, that they can move forward, past their current state of stagnation, and that together, they will support one another to overcome the fears that are holding them back… even if that fear is the fear of a new way of life. Because this is a romance, it shouldn’t be a surprise that in a group of two men and two women, couples emerge outside of their weekly group sessions – as well as friendships as they become one another’s support system in varying degrees. Quinn does a wonderful job of mixing the sessions with the characters’ daily lives so that the reader gets a sense of the person and sees what it is that they’re struggling with. Because the book is presented from each characters’ point of view, we’re not only privy to the events that affect them, but their thoughts as well, giving us further insight into each one of them. For me, the most telling passages were the letters they each wrote – well, maybe not Carter’s (lol) – because as the program progressed, they got better at telling “Life” what they were facing and how it made them feel. Not surprisingly, it was the final set of letters that touched my heart the most, particularly the very last one and it made me bawl my eyes out even as I smiled.

What I loved is how the author coupled the characters. In one, Quinn paired two people whose losses are nothing alike, yet their losses give them an ability to understand one another in a way that many people wouldn’t. In the other couple, they’re night and day, complete opposites in the jaded bad boy and the wide-eyed innocent. Yet both couples are believable and are written in such a way that I was cheering for them both. I wanted them to succeed, even when the odds were stacked against them, even when I was begging them to stop pushing the other too hard, even when I was praying they would push the other person harder, even when I wanted to smack one of them for being obstinate, even when I wanted to push them off their precipice and make them act, make them conquer their fear, make them face life, and make them claim the piece of happiness that was in their reach. Dear Life is a beautiful book that struck a chord deep inside of me and it is one that I know I will read again, repeatedly. Thank you, Meghan Quinn, for sharing such a beautiful story with the world.

Born in New York and raised in Southern California, Meghan has grown into a sassy, peanut butter eating, blonde haired swearing, animal hoarding lady. She is known to bust out and dance if “It’s Raining Men” starts beating through the air and heaven forbid you get a margarita in her, protect your legs because they may be humped.

Once she started commuting for an hour and twenty minutes every day to work for three years, she began to have conversations play in her head, real life, deep male voices and dainty lady coos kind of conversations. Perturbed and confused, she decided to either see a therapist about the hot and steamy voices running through her head or start writing them down. She decided to go with the cheaper option and started writing… enter her first novel, Caught Looking.

Now you can find the spicy, most definitely on the border of lunacy, kind of crazy lady residing in Colorado with the love of her life and her five, furry four legged children, hiking a trail or hiding behind shelves at grocery stores, wondering what kind of lube the nervous stranger will bring home to his wife. Oh and she loves a good boob squeeze!

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Dear Life by Meghan Quinn to read and review for this tour.

When Calls the Heart by Janette Oke

Nothing in her privileged eastern upbringing has prepared Elizabeth for the challenges of frontier life...

Elizabeth Thatcher is young, pretty, cultured, and educated. But when she journeys west to teach school in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, she's completely unprepared for the conditions she encounters. Still, she's determined to succeed at the formidable task of fitting in with the locals and shaping the hearts and minds of the schoolchildren in her care.

She's just as determined not to give her heart to any of the local frontiersmen. Until she meets Wynn Delaney, a member the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...

Book 1
Buy Links

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Jordan – ☆☆☆
This was my first time reading any books by Janette Oke. Honestly, I only picked it up because I somehow started watching the Hallmark channel TV show, When Calls the Heart, which is based on the Canadian West series by Oke. I think if it weren't for how slow the book seemed to go I would've enjoyed it more. It picked up some towards the end, but the beginning seemed to move at a snail’s pace. In addition, the romance was very bare minimum. Unfortunately, I didn't really look too far into this series before I picked it up because I assumed I'd like it since I had binge watched the first two seasons on Netflix, which was my bad because they're not very similar. However, I'm slightly curious how book #2 will proceed and will most likely take a peek at it. Nevertheless, this was an easy clean quick read.

Elizabeth, the main character, grew up in the East Coast and decides to move out to the Canadian frontier for a teaching position. Her cultured upbringing leaves her unprepared for the harsh lands and lifestyle on the frontier. Slowly, Elizabeth finds herself softening towards the red-coated Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer.

3 stars for When Calls the Heart. Did I hate it? No, but I also didn't really have a ton of fond feelings about it either, which is unfortunate because I've started to really enjoy the TV show. This one just left me feeling very neutral.

Janette Oke pioneered inspirational fiction and is the leading author in the category today. Love Comes Softly, Janette’s first novel, has sold over 1 million copies. Janette is now the bestselling author of over 40 books, 32 of which have been translated into fourteen languages. Janette receives fan mail from all over the world and answers each letter personally She received the 1992 President’s Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association for her significant contribution to Christian fiction, and has been awarded the coveted Gold Medallion Award for fiction. Janette and her husband, Edward, have four grown children and nine grandchildren and make their home in Canada.

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Jordan reviewed her personal copy of When Calls the Heart (Canadian West #1) by Janette Oke for this post.