Three stories revolving around Christmas sounded like a win win situation to get me in mood for the upcoming holiday season. Each story had their share of romance and heartwarming moments.
So 🤔 3 different authors, each writing compelling Christmas stories. I found myself feeling meh about one story, loving one story and liking one story.
Starry Night 3⭐️
Mistletoe & Mimosas 4⭐️
Missing Christmas 3.5⭐️
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and authors for the opportunity to read and review the arc of these novellas in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is mostly a review of the Clayborn novella (4.5 stars) with a brief note about why.

I requested A Snowy Little Christmas because Kate Clayborn's name is attached to it. That's the only reason. I love her writing.

Anthologies are a great way to try new authors, and every time I find a new author to love, I'm stoked. So. I had zero knowledge about the stories (aside from the holiday theme), high hopes for the Clayborn & vague thoughts about finding a new author to binge and follow. [spoiler alert: this didn't happen]

Starry Night, Fern Michaels
DNF
I struggled with the third person point of view right from the start, and the story didn't grab my attention. Approximately five pages in, I realized this story wasn't going to work for me. I DNF'd it.

....decision time...

After a false start, I just decided to skip ahead to "the good part." Friends, I knew that would be the Kate Clayborn novella. I loved the Chance of a Lifetime series, and discovering Missing Christmas was another story in that universe was an unexpected, awesome bonus.

Missing Christmas, Kate Clayborn
4.5 stars

The first book in the Chance of a Lifetime series, Beginner's Luck, is still my favorite. I loved Ben, I loved Kit...and I hoped the author would revisit Jasper. Ben's best friend played a significant role in the story, and his actions had major repercussions on the relationship between the principal characters. But by the end of the novel, it was still hard to tell if Jasper was a bad guy or simply desperate and dumb.

Turns out he was desperate, and because of it, he did a dumb thing. And it nearly cost him his relationship with Ben...and with the third partner in their fledgeling business, Kristen. But because he's a good guy who made a terrible decision, she forgave him. Oh, and also because she's in love with him.

Missing Christmas is a delightful and romantic friends to lovers story, with a heaping dose of 'snowed in with one bed,' thrown in for good measure. Jasper and Kristen are brilliant at business, but failures at love. These two - business partners who spend LOTS of time together - carry a torch for one another for entirely TOO LONG, pretending they don't 'like' like each other.

After an unexpected, passionate kiss at the end of a long business day, sexy feelings turn into incredible awkward feelings. And true to form, they both retreat and try to pretend the kiss never happened. Fortunately, a road trip provides them with one last chance to get it right, and the journey - literally and figuratively - is a treat.

Missing Christmas is the perfect blend of angst and romance, featuring two principals you can’t help but love and root for. It’s one holiday gift you should go ahead and unwrap straight away. Bonus points for the Ben & Kit cameo!

Mistletoe and Mimosas by Tara Sheet
I haven’t read it. Yet.

I thoroughly enjoyed the compilation of holiday stories in A Snowy Little Christmas. If you are looking for a warm cup of hot chocolate in written form, it’s a book not to miss. 4 stars.

A SNOWY LITTLE CHRISTMAS by Fern Michaels, Tara Sheets and Kate Clayborn is a collection of short stories. That you can read easily during your lunch hour. The authors are ones that everyone is familiar with and never lets anyone down. I enjoyed all the stories in this book!

Three novellas about holiday romance. This book will set your holiday season "feel goods". Snuggle up and get ready for a cozy evening of lovely reading.

3.5 ⭐️

Two words: HALLMARK MOVIES. If you are a fan of those feel-good, heartwarming Hallmark holiday movies, then this book of three romances are for you. Cheers to my first holiday romance book of the year—this has set the mood!

Of the three, Kate Clayborn’s was my favorite, which makes me all the more excited to read her upcoming novel, Love Lettering. After a single kiss between two friends (and business partners), Kristen and Jasper have second thoughts. Business before pleasure, right? Until they’re stranded in Boston in the middle of a snowstorm while on a trip to meet with a client days before Christmas. Written in alternating points of view, this charming romance couldn’t be any more fun to read. Get the fire going, make a mug of your delicious hot beverage of choice, and read this underneath a cozy blanket.

Thank you NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for providing me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A Snowy Little Christmas is a collection of three well written and entertaining Christmas novellas. I enjoyed each selection. I highly recommend this book. I received an arc from the publisher and this is my unbiased review.

Three short, fun stories by Fern Michaels, Tara Sheets, and Kate Clayborn. I always love Fern Michaels’ books, so it was a no brainer to pick this one up. (Jessie, the radio host and book lover didn’t disappoint!) It was also nice to read new to me authors. (Layla/ Sebastian and Kristen/Jasper were both cozy little romances too!) Keep the stories coming, Fern!

A Snowy Little Christmas is a collection of novellas for the holiday season. It includes Starry Night by Fern Michaels, Mistletoe and Mimosas by Tara Sheets, and Missing Christmas by Kate Clayborn.

These enjoyable tales center around the theme of home: finding home, coming home, and home being where you are as long as you are with the one you love. Each story features strong characters and interesting settings. These stories will add just a little bit extra Christmas cheer for the reader.

I did enjoy this anthology and do recommend it!

I received an electronic ARC from Kensington Books through NetGalley.
All three stories were delightful. The common theme of being snowed in was obvious in each. The three writers have very different styles and reveal their characters and plots at different paces. Each may appeal to unique styles of readers and together they appeal across the spectrum. From Michaels slower pace to Sheets nostalgia and healing finished with Clayborn's appeal to let go of rigid rules and reveal true emotions, readers are wrapped in the joy of the Christmas season and brought in to the lives in the three settings.

I have only read Kate Clayborn's story and absolutely loved it. Jasper is a side character from Beginner's Luck and we didn't see him in a carry favourable light there. I was glad to see there is so much more to his character which explains his intense reaction to Ben getting together with Kit.

Friends to lovers, snowed in during Christmas, lots of pinning ❤❤❤

Skip the First Story and Read the Rest - 3.5 Stars

Summary: Don’t waste your time with the first story. However, the second and third stories are quite delightful and make reading this holiday anthology worth it. Each story review is below.

Novella 1: Starry Night by Fern Michaels
2 Stars, and that's being generous

This story seemed disjointed and I had a hard time staying with it. The premise is good but the follow-through was lacking and no risks were taken. Jessie's uncle and aunt decide to retire and move elsewhere and her uncle just ups and gives Jessie his bookstore so that she can sell it and buy her own house. Jessie already has two jobs, one in marketing and the other as a secret identity radio personality Dr Richie who gives advice to the lovelorn. Now she has the bookstore. She begins the process of clearing out the store and making renovations in order to put it on the market. Evan is the contractor she contacts and they have a brief instant connection. However, there was way too much detail about inconsequential things. I now know more about her wardrobe, renovation, and food choices than I do about what Jessie and Evan actually looked like.

I'm thinking less time should have been spent on technical detail and more time on building that romance...otherwise this is just a story about Jessie, Her Bookstore, Her Secret Job, and the Guy she thinks is Cute.

There also appears to be more dialogue between Jessie and her friends and coworkers than between Jessie and Evan. There doesn't seem to be any natural progression of attraction. At chapter 13 out of 15 chapters, we still know next to nothing about Evan. The longest conversation Jessie and Evan have is at the end of the story, and it's mostly just Jessie talking. Everything gets wrapped up neatly with no prior warning that these decisions were heading this direction. Seems like the ending is more HFN.

Novella 2: Mistletoe and Mimosas by Tara Sheets
4 Stars

I liked this cute second chance romance that often made me giggle. Layla is a real estate agent and has everything she needs, including fostering a kitten she didn't know she wanted (Toonces). He's a veterinarian who needs to buy a house, and there's your double meet cute.

Layla and Sebastian were attracted to each other in high school, but came from different backgrounds. His family was rich and he had snooty snotty friends who bordered on obnoxious, and she was poor and lived in a trailer home. His parents were affluent but fought constantly and often put their kids in the middle. Layla was raised only by her Mom, who had to take on more than one job to make ends meet, but they were happy.

However, there are unresolved hurts in their pasts that they must get through before she can begin to address her feelings for him and hope for something more. And there's even a moral to the story during the wrap up. Love it.

This is a mostly clean romance, with some steamy kissing but nothing more sexy than that, although there's some innuendo coupled with humorous situations. Whenever they are in the same room together, you always have a sense of their connection. It's almost tangible. You get a sense of HEA.

Novella 3: Missing Christmas by Kate Clayborn
4 Stars

I enjoyed this sweet, touching and sometimes steamy holiday romance, written in alternating first person. Although it’s part of a series, this novella is a standalone and I had no trouble following the characters. Kristen and Jasper have a recruiting firm that's trying to stay afloat. They’ve been best friends for the past six years, and each wants more but is afraid to mess up the friendship as well as their working partnership. But then one of them finally messes with the status quo. What's more important? The job or each other? With a little help from the Christmas season and a few friends for support, a happily ever after is just a snowball's throw away.

Although steamy, there are no explicit sex scenes, no graphic sex language - they just get to the condom unwrapping, then move onto the next morning. A few euphemisms and generalities, and you get the idea.

My copy was provided in advance from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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.

This trilogy of stories set around Christmas time was engaging as characters come to an understanding about themselves and their view of life. I'd prefer to have Christmas stories concentrate on changes of the heart and do without any steaminess in the writing. There was both in 'A Snowy Little Christmas' so it was a mixed bag for me. That being said 'Mistletoe and Mimosas' by Tara Sheets held the most appeal as Layla and Sebastian revealed depths and how life's challenges had brought them to love. The settings of the other two stories held real appeal and the characters were also likeable. For those who like this style of contemporary story 'A Snowy Little Christmas' should suit.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

This was a charming and enjoyable trio of Christmas novellas. This hit the spot and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys contemporary romance holiday novellas. This was especially good because all three novellas were enjoyable. Sometimes in these types of story collections there are some uneven stories with one big standout, but this is not the case here. Fire up the hot chocolate and spend some time this holiday season with this book! I especially like these novella length stories during the busy Christmas season.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing Corporation for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The 3 novellas in this collection brings some early Christmas magic to the reader. Great love stories, happy endings and some tears. There is always a misunderstanding that brings hurt to the protagonist and by the end of the novella hope and love should prevail. A cute fuzzy little kitten can only add to the holiday charm.

Definitely looking forward to hearing more from these authors in the new year.

Sweetness! I loved how the three novellas carried the same tone and built on its innocent romance feel. There is no filler, no questionable motives, just some realistic roadblocks, lovely language and connections and feel-good endings to each. A wonderful choice for when you want a light read that delivers warmth. I wasn't familiar with Clayborn's work but will now look for it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free book file in exchange for a review.

Love the authors in this book. Especially Christmas romance stories. You will enjoy it too. It's good to find love at Christmas time

Three short festive stories, all great reads. A great introduction to these authors, so looking forward to reading more.

I read this for the Kate Clayborn novella and I wasn’t disappointed. Such emotion in a short form is impressive. Enjoyed the visit back to Jasper from Beginner’s Luck.