I love armchair traveling especially at Christmastime (in the story. It's September in real life). I have been lucky enough to see London at Christmastime in real life. It's been years but I can see it like it was yesterday. The first main character you met, Louisa Graham, is a baker. Reading about her concoctions made me so hungry I actually made brownies (from a box...she'd probably be ashamed that they weren't from scratch). I'm not always the biggest fan of dual stories but I really liked Kate, the producer of the TV show that brings Louisa to London to bake for the annual Christmas Eve Dinner TV special at Claridge's. Thanks to the dual main characters you have story lines for two types of romantics...fans of second chances and fans of new love. But as everyone knows there's no guarantee that you'll get a happily ever after.

Christmas in London is a memorable story about Louisa, a pastry chef from New York City, who is asked to fill in for a celebrity chef on a television cooking show being filmed in London. Louisa's dream is to open her own restaurant and knows the publicity she gets from being on the show will help the bakery she currently works at and her new restaurant when she opens it. So, she reluctantly agrees to go to London to film the show.

While in London, Louisa meets other well knows chefs including one who she idolizes, Digby Bunting. But in the end, he isn't what she expected. Noah, who is in charge of Louisa during the filming, tries to warn Louisa about Digby's reputation with women, but Louisa doesn't listen and finds herself in a sticky situation. Noah is starting to have feelings for Louisa and just wants to keep her safe. They both believe there isn't room in their lives for love. But, they soon realize they were headed towards love since the day they met.

In this book, there is also the story of Kate, the show producer, and her college love Trevor. They haven't seen each other since college after a misunderstanding that caused them to split up. It was nice to learn how they reconciled.

As the story plays out, it is easy to visualize the sights and sounds of London and imagine eating the incredible food.

This one was ok I read it in one sitting and I really liked the story. The characters in this one felt a little lacking and because of that, it made it fall a little short of my expectations. With the shortcomings of the characters, it made the story feel slightly flat and without real depth. The other issue is that the males in this story really overreact to everything and the woman just felt way to forgiving. Becuase of these things the story and the characters just felt way far fetched. The story descriptions in this one worked very well and were very beautiful. In the end, if you can get past the issues this book has the story itself was ok. I think with a little more work this book would have been so much better.

2.5 stars. Ms. Hughes did an excellent job of describing "Christmas in London", so much so, that I'm ready to go there! But, she gave us pretty childish characters who seemed to go off in a huff over the silliest things. Some of the chefs in this book were pretty unbelievable. I love cooking shows, so there is no way in hell that I'm going to believe that world renowned, Michelin star chefs are going to behave in awe when a young nobody baker describes a croquembouche like they have never even heard of one!! The female lead, Louisa, is always talking about opening a restaurant when it's clear that she only likes to bake - so why does she not open a bakery?! Then there's Digby....jeesh! His way to the top is ridiculous, not buying it! (I know, lots of exclamation marks). So there you have it, loved the setting, not so much the characters.

**Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley in exchange of an honest review.**

Christmas in London is like the best Christmas present, you sort of knew what you were getting but the present was better than you imagined. It is a story of boy meets girl and he makes her dreams, for her career, come true by having her fill in on a cooking show being filmed in London at Christmas. Along the way there is misunderstandings but in the end it all works out. Plus there is the descriptions of Christmas pastries that leave you anticipating the sugary goodness.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for my review.

Christmas in London is a wonderful love story to get you in the mood for the holidays. The relationship between Noah and Louisa is as sweet as her pastries and I thoroughly enjoyed Kate. Fans of Hughes will find a gift in this new novel.

Now I wish I was swept to England for Christmas!

Beautiful and dreaming . If you want to dream of beautiful locations, great and delicious food, appreciating sumptuous descriptions of places, food, people, living in the magical atmosphere of Christmas in one of the most beautiful European cities, go for this book.
It's one of the best one you can find around. What I loved the most were the delicious recipes of the various desserts, I think I put on some kilos just while reading about them, yum! and the fresh protagonists of the story add a special touch.

The story is this one: Louisa works at a bakery in NYC and one day a young man seeing she baked wonderfully delicious cinnamon rolls asks her to giving them to him for the set of a production discovering later that everyone appreciated her cinnamon rolls, but surprises are not finished because her cinnamon rolls with a special secret ingredient in it convinced everyone also for something else: Louisa is a great baker and she will fly to London with all of them for being part of the annual Christmas Eve Dinner TV.
Louisa will accept, leaving for London...

I thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ebook.

Louisa Graham is working twelve hour shifts at a bakery in Manhattan the week before Christmas when the assistant for a cooking show barges in after closing and insists he needs to buy the freshly baked rolls that Louisa had just finished to sale the next morning. Since she is just the baker Louisa insists he go elsewhere but when offered free publicity for the bakery on a popular cooking show she relents and sells the rolls. The next day the assistant returns claiming the rolls were a hit but the star of the show was allergic and now he wants Louisa to replace her on the already scheduled trip to London to film a Christmas Eve Dinner TV special at Claridge’s.

Once in London Louisa finds herself getting closer and closer to the show’s assistant that got her involved in the life of a television star but she also has the chance to work with her cooking idol Digby Bunting. Meanwhile, the show’s producer, Kate, has run into the man she left behind after she left St. Andrew’s in Scotland ten years ago and finds that now he’s a successful mathematician and newly divorced and the spark is definitely still there between the two even after all this time has passed.

Christmas in London is the third book I’ve read by Anita Hughes and my first thought when picking up her books is always being so impressed with how well she does with her settings in her books. As a reader that loves to travel but certainly doesn’t get the chance to do that anywhere near what I wish that I could it’s always such a thrill when reading when I feel like I could climb right into the book and step out in the area the story is set in. This time along with the setting being wonderful and feeling as if I was sightseeing London along with the character Anita has also made this one that the foodies will certainly enjoy bringing flavor to the pages with all the cooking talk in the book.

Another positive with this story was the fact that the reader got the bonus of two developing relationship at the same time. The point of view switched back and forth to establish both relationship and was rather easy to follow along. Having not one but two relationships forming at Christmastime made for quite the lovely read although personally I might have preferred a bit less controversy and drama within both but for some reason that seems to be the norm for romance stories, a bit of angst before the happily ever after. But regardless this was a nice story with a great setting as usual in an Anita Hughes book and I’ll be looking forward to picking up more of her stories in the future.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This was a sweet story, sweet in nature for the most part & sweet with the lovely & scrumptious descriptions of desserts!
Through an odd circumstance, Louisa ( a pastry chef ) gets offered a chance to fill in for a cooking show chef in London for a holiday show. While I liked the magical descriptions of both the food & the location spots, I found it all very unrealistic & farfetched. The setting was lovely though.
There was one thing the author did over & over again in the book- Louisa saw a man in a leather jacket walk in & it was Noah or Kate saw a man walk through the front door & it was Trevor....I started to get on my nerves.
I liked the book, didn't love it...thought the female characters seemed too easily swayed my the male characters & I thought the male characters were a little too jealous, etc

MY REVIEW OF “CHRISTMAS IN LONDON” by Anita Hughes
Christmas in August? It is the end of August and I have just finished reading “Christmas in London” by Anita Hughes. Kudos to Anita Hughes for bringing the nostalgia and joyous feeling that accompanies Christmas. The author’s descriptions of the food, the Christmas trees, the presents, the partying, the snow gently falling down, creates the wonderful images of a Christmas season. Even better, the setting starts in New York and travels to the descriptive destination and sites of London. Anita Hughes takes us on a tour of the museums, stores, little shops, restaurants, cafes, and even Buckingham Palace. The genres for this novel are Fiction, Women’s Fiction and Romance. What better place for a romantic background than London?
The author describes her characters as complicated, complex and confused. It was the week before Christmas and Louisa Graham is working in a bakery in Manhattan. It is a very busy time of the year, and Louis, a trained chef, is working long hours with her goal to open her own restaurant that specializes in her fabulous desserts and baking. As she is closing the bakery for the night, a man comes running in and pays extra for her cinnamon rolls, that she has just pulled out of the oven. Noah is a Cooking Show Assistant and has been looking for a bakery that is open to buy a replacement for the rolls that burned on the show. The cinnamon rolls are a huge success on the show. The star of the show got an allergic reaction , and Noah offers Louisa the opportunity to take the star’s place for a week in London, where they will be filming the show. This is a great opportunity for Louisa to go to London and work with famous chefs.
The producer of the cooking show is beautiful and capable Kate, who arranges for Noah to transform Louisa into a “star” for the week. Kate’s goal is that the show must go on, and everything has to be perfect. Noah has a goal to be an attorney and works long hours as an assistant for the cooking show to be able to afford law school. Kate also works long hours and has very little time for a social life. As Kate is arranging details for the filming of the show, she runs into someone special from her past.
The author discusses the importance of working towards the right goals, friendship, forgiveness, trust, love and hope. This was a delightful and charming story and I would highly recommend this for readers of Women’s Fiction and Romance Genres. I received this Advanced Reading Copy from The Great Thoughts Ninja Review Team for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Publisher and author for the ARC to review. Expected release date: October 3, 2017. The story is strong and inviting. I was recently in London on holiday and reading this book made me revisit some of the sights I had seen. It also made me want to go back to London. The characters are down to earth and the reader can relate to them. The two relationships in this story are similar and both female characters help each other with their new relationships. There is a twist in the story which I liked very much. First time reading this author and not the last.

As a Christmas chick lit the story is quite fun although I think the author has a very idealised idea of what the festive season in the capital is like! In places it read a bit like a commercial for Claridge's although I must admit I would love to experience what it's like to stay in this gorgeous hotel. I enjoyed the food and cooking descriptions but I would have liked more variety and less repetition and it would have been wonderful to have recipes at the end. An enjoyable quick read that should get you in the mood for Christmas with your loved ones.

A contemporary holiday romance that finds a young baker filming a Christmas tv special after she does a favor for a man buying her cinnamon rolls. This is a double romance with two very satisfying conclusions. Louisa and Trevor and Kate and Noah are all in London and they learn that forgetting the past and moving on is an important part of life. A glimpse into the world of chefs and tv production this is a good Christmas story for all readers. Sweet and Happy.

Christmas in London by Anita Hughes makes me want to see London for the holidays. Before I wrote this review I checking airfare! Louisa is a baker who at the last moment gets the opportunity to bake on a British baking show. Lots of great descriptions of the Christmas season and sights in London mixed with baking and a little romance make for an enjoyable read.

At times I felt I was reading a travelogue, and did not think the detailed descriptions of places (or the name dropping) added to the story. There seemed to be a lot of miscommunication between some of the main characters. I found the Louisa character rather difficult to like....she is supposedly keen to make her mark as a baker, gets this wonderful opportunity in London, yet is continually doing her own thing/going her own way instead of making the most of this chance to change her life.

I chose this book because it was set in London and revolved around pastries.
• The London setting turned me on as I, myself spent the 2016 Christmas and New Year in London. I was looking forward to hopefully recognizing the settings and tourist sights the author described.
• Additionally, the fact the story revolved around a dessert chef (Louisa, the story’s baker) only helped further entice me to read this. Who doesn’t want to read a book about delicious pastries?
Unfortunately, this book seemed to lag in character development and while I was looking forward to injections of language surrounding the story’s cuisine and aromatic descriptions of food, I was unpleasantly surprised to find the addition awkward in the contexts it was presented and overall rather distracting. I had a hard time feeling for Louisa and failed to really connect with her as she seemed to take her opportunity for granted.
I did enjoy that the author switched between two female characters, Kate the cooking show’s producer and Louisa, the baker. The story was injected with Kate and Louisa’s internal battles between which man to choose, whether the timing was right to fall in love and how to make time in their careers for love, but I found the dialogue between characters and the problems they faced childish. The men of the story had such extreme trust issues it was hard to find their behavior believable given the lack of male character development. I fell short on empathy for the characters and struggled to attach to them, which subsequently kept me from really getting hooked on this book.

3 stars for Christmas in London by Anita Hughes. I loved the parts of the story about baking and recipes and would love to see those incorporated into the back of the book when published, but I've no idea if that's the plan or not.

I found the Kate and Louisa story lines rather similar in that both fell for guys that didn't trust other men, allowing this to color how they treated the women. Why? These two ladies just allowed this sort of ridiculousness to carry on and rarely stood up for themselves. That got old, rather quickly. Going forward, who would want to make a life with a guy that was ready to ditch the person he claimed to love because an old boyfriend kissed their check?

The sights, sounds and smells of London were fabulous and even if most of us won't spend a Christmas in London luxuriating at Claridge's, we can live vicariously through Kate and Louisa's journey. If you like books that very accurately describe places and things, you'll enjoy that aspect of this novel a lot!

Had Louisa and Kate had differing love story lines I think I'd have loved this book. They were just too similar and it was a little irritating, to be honest. You don't need any imagination to see that Louisa and Noah would morph into Kate and Trevor in 10 years.

Thank you to the publishers, NetGalley and the author for allowing me an ARC.

This was a delicious winter read, especially on a beach in Hawaii!

CHRISTMAS IN LONDON by Anita Hughes was a delightful read that captures the magic of the Christmas season and the wonder of new and old relationships. I loved the scenery and the foods. Sometimes the temperament of Noah and Louisa was frustrating but it played well into the overall story. I really enjoyed Kate's storyline and think that fans of Hughes will find this book puts them in the Christmas spirit!

I received an advance review copy of this book from the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team and NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Christmas in London is a fun book to read for the holidays, a great escape from the hustle and bustle of the season.