Review: A SNOWY LITTLE CHRISTMAS Anthology

I received a complimentary copy of this anthology from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
 
My biggest snow story experience? When I was 11 or 12, two of my cousins, my siblings, and I got snowed in at my divorced dad and his then girlfriend’s house for several days. By the end of it, my dad was threatening to rent a helicopter to get us returned home.
 
Because of this (despite this?), I can really respect a snowed-in story, especially of the let’s-fall-in-love-while-the-snow-falls variety. It just seems to work on an elemental level: the vibrancy of the colors, the isolation, the cocoon effect. Everything’s reduced to the people you’re with really, whether it’s the family starting to grate on your nerves or a potential love interest, like in the A Snowy Little Christmas anthology.
 
I was so excited to get a copy of this anthology, mainly because Kate Clayborn’s included and I could happily read her books all the time. They’re lovely. In the end, I loved Clayborn’s novella—as I had expected I would—I really enjoyed the one written by Tara Sheets, and found the first novella in the collection, written by Fern Michaels, to be not quite my preference.
 
I’ve never read a book by Fern Michaels before, and I didn’t have an idea of what to expect. Starry Night, her anthology contribution, follows Jessie, an advertising exec & secret relationship-advice radio host, as she repeatedly travels to the Croton-on-Hudson bookstore her uncle gave her to schedule renovations, relocate the books, etc. There, she finds the close-knit community she’s never had before and meets single dad and contractor Evan.
 
I had some trouble relating to the characters in this one. On one hand, the leads are mature and sophisticated; on the other, they come across as not very approachable and often old-fashioned to me. I also had difficulty with the story itself: it seems to use more telling vs. showing, and the romance is subdued and pretty vague, even in its conclusion.
 
Tara Sheets’s Mistletoe and Mimosas, the second novella in the collection, adorably pairs Layla, the heroine, with the long-remorseful man who was complicit in the bullying she experienced at high school. Both leads are admirable: Layla’s made a successful life for herself and is aware of her worth; Sebastian is very sorry for how he treated Layla in high school and determined to meet the challenge of showing her that.
 
This snowed-in story is sweet and gentle, and Sheets features enough intriguing characters from her other works that I'm planning on reading more.
 
My favorite story in the collection, Kate Clayborn’s Missing Christmas, picks up with characters introduced in her debut novel, Beginner’s Luck. Kristen and Jasper are co-workers and very close friends, and while both have secret feelings for the other, neither wants to destroy what they have on the slim chance that they could have something more. But luckily for us, Kristen and Jasper get snowed in at a one-bed cabin.
 
Clayborn’s a master at subtlety; I love the little touches and observations her characters make. Everything feels so important, so critical, because Clayborn makes the reader feel the leads’s yearning. Missing Christmas is the steamiest story in the anthology and the relationship between Kristen and Jasper has the most depth. Their HEA feels totally believable to me given how thoughtfully Clayborn portrays the history of their close relationship. This novella gives me major feels.
 
All things considered, A Snowy Little Christmas is a delightful holiday offering comprised of three novellas with vastly different styles and steam levels. There’s good romance representation here, but the flip side is that like me, you might find yourself adoring one story, liking one, and struggling with another.
 
3.5 stars out of 5.