Definitely a cute holiday romance! This is a pretty typical trope, girl returns to small hometown and the guy she still holds a candle for, but it's used often because it works. A heartwarming love story great for reading on a cozy winter day. Thank you for my copy!

Thank you for my review copy! An Imperfect Christmas was a sweet and cozy holiday love story. While it played out like many other holiday books, this one flowed nicely and was still a heartwarming story.

Thank you @netgalley, Tanya Jean Russel and Salween Books for the ARC of An Imperfect Christmas to read for my honest review. This novel was published on November 19, 2020.

This was a wonderful story of love, family, forgivenesses and second chances. This is a feel good story to help you get into the holiday spirit.

How do you pick yourself up when everything falls apart? Maggie Green thought she had her life on track. Relationship -check, successful career - check, beautiful apartment in London - check!
But then her life comes crashing down. Freshly dumped, lost in her career and facing some medical worries Maggie returns to her family home for Christmas where she hasn't been for two years. Will she be able to make peace with her past and find a bright future?
This book has many traits of a typical Christmas romance or Hallmark movie type feeling, but that;s what drew me to it, The highlight of this book was a bit of a romantic twist happening way earlier than usual or expected. Though that was a nice surprise it did make the rest of the book fall a bit flat. All in all a good light hearrted Christmas read.
Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Well it's that time of the year again when I can't get enough of Christmas books, to be honest I read them throughout the year, but cram more in around November/December each year.

An Imperfect Christmas is a lovely, heartwarming story of family and friends coming together.

It follows the story of Maggie a successful accountant who lives in London with her boyfriend, she is due to travel back home to spend some time with her sister who is getting married. She has been through a lot on her 24 years and is about to go through even more when she gets a call from the hospital to say her smear test is showing abnormal results. Whilst her health scare looms, her personal life is also crumbling around her. When she arrives home she is reunited with Nathan, the boy next door and her first love, the pair try to mend their relationship and find the old feelings they had for each other never left.

Not actually sure why the book has a humour tag above, not sure I would class it as that with the subject matter.

Thanks you to Sapere Books and the author Tanya Jean Russell for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sweet Christmas romance! If you enjoy Hallmark Christmas movies then you will absolutely love this story.

A love story on second chances at Christmastime, easy to read romance.

Maggie has it all with a high flying job working with her boyfriend, and a lovely apartment, until the day her boyfriend gives her a letter from the company with her redundancy and breaks up with he then to top it off her Dr wants to do more tests to find out if she has cancer.

Maggie returns to her home town where her sister (who brought her up after their parents died in an accident). is about to get married.
Nathan was her first love who unfortunately broke up with her before she went off to uni.
They still have a lot to say to each other and Maggie has a lot of trust issues.
Can Maggie get over her trust issues and can they rekindle their love and can Nathan help Magggie through her illness?
Very easy to read romance.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Reviewed on Goodreads

I enjoyed this story, it had a nice warm feeling you it. The main character is having a run of bad news but with the help of the warmth of family it ends in a happy ending. The story was a bit predictable but was definitely an easy read perfect for a cold evening on the sofa.

What a wonderful story or love, family, forgiveness and second chances.
I loved the two families, they shared so much love, that even without the heartache the two sisters suffered would still be there.
Nathan and Maggie are so in love but both so scared that they build their walls s on high, until Nathan realised he has to just keep climbing. There’s was a lot going on in this story, lots of characters introduced, of which I hope will be getting their own story told soon.
A fab quick read showing a lot of love.

Thank you NetGalley, Tanya Jean Russel and Sapere Books for the ARC of An Imperfect Christmas. This is my personal review.

Maggie had a full life - some wonderful and some not so wonderful. With all the changes happening she decides it is the year to go home and be with family for Christmas. But going home means she will have to keep secrets and also face the heartbreak she had when she was younger.
The time she is at home turns her life upside down and then puts it right. Nathan is her first true love but life got in the way and now they both have to face what is happening in their lives to see if there is any chance for happiness.
I enjoyed every page of this book and I know you will too.

Maggie’s life hasn’t always been easy. She lost her mother and father when she was very young and her sister Sarah fought for custody to raise her giving up her dreams to leave their small town.

Now 25 Maggie is returning to her home town after being away for 2 years. She put on a brave face but underneath it’s all falling apart. She was supposed to be made director yet just before Christmas they made her redundant. Her boyfriend and co worker also felt it was the right time to break up with her. To top it off her dr calls to tell her she need come in urgently.

Maggie returns home for the Christmas break and go to watch her sister get married. But the one person she’s been trying to erase from her life is back. The boy that broke her heart, Nathan. It’s time for Maggie to find happiness in her life and decide what comes next. Defending off a few curve balls along the way!

A really enjoyable read. Maggie is a character you really sympathise with, life has not been kind to her over the years but coming back to her family could be just what she needs even if the circumstances are not. This book will tug at your heart strings and keep you up at night until you finish it!

This is the type of book that I want to read in these bleak times as it's escapism at high level.
It's sweet, heartwarming and I love the festive atmosphere and the fleshed out characters.
It's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

An Imperfect Christmas is a slightly imperfect Christmas read. The plot was okay, but fairly standard. The secondary story line dealing with cervical cancer was interesting, as were some of the characters. I found Maggie's character to be somewhat shallow.

Thank you #Netgalley for the advanced copy!

Loved this Christmas read following Maggie as she goes back to her hometown, post break up and losing her job. She is reunited with her childhood friends/family and tries to make a plan of what her next life moves are. Maggie spends time with Nathan, an ex, fairly quickly it becomes apparent that there may still be a connection. As much as Maggie tries to distance her safe to protect her feelings, fate has a way of bringing people together when you need them the most.

A romantic holiday book that gives you all the holiday feels. Loved the background story of Maggie and how coming home helped her find her true self. A wonderful book that I couldn’t put down.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.

At Twenty five Maggie Green thought she had her life on track: she was in a long-term relationship, along with a successful career in finance and a fabulous apartment in London to match her lifestyle.

Suddenly everything falls apart.

The company that she worked so hard, devoted her time to makes her redundant, not only that but she gets dumped all on the same day.

Add to this, a worrying call she’s receives from her doctor.

Now, her pride in tatters, Maggie goes to her family home for the Christmas period. A place she hasn’t returned to for two years.

But, no one knows is aware of the real reason why she hasn’t been back. No one, except the one person, who she is nervous about seeing again.

So does Maggie make peace with her past?? Will she find love this Christmas??

Recommend it.

‘An Imperfect Christmas,’ a wonderfully written, heartwarming seasonal romance written by Tanya Jean Russell to be published November 19, 2020, reminds us about the magic of Christmas and the strength of family in the midst of challenges.

Maggie Green has it all; a glamorous life in London, a corporate accounting job including a promotion in the works, a handsome, career-driven boyfriend and a great bank account. She’s come a long way after losing her parents in a tragic car accident when she was eleven years old. Sadly, as much as this seemed to be her dream, it still doesn’t fill the void in her life. Something is missing. Suddenly, her life becomes as dark and foreboding as the November weather that’s just rolled in. In one fell swoop she’s lost her job, her boyfriend, Rupert, has dumped her and she’s just been informed to schedule another appointment with the oncologist. Realizing again that everyone leaves her life just when she needs them the most, she decides to return to Honeyford, the family farm that she left two years ago and vowed never to return. Why did she leave so abruptly? Why is the farm pulling at her heartstrings when she hasn’t been back? Does she find what fills the void?

I immediately connected with the characters. They were raw and flawed and so eager for growth and change. I loved watching them transform as the plot unfolded. Russell stuffed each one with so many endearing characteristics and so much potential for growth and connectedness. I was excited to see a seasonal book that had so much emotion and rich character development but was even more impressed with her writing style. Readers can’t help but get involved in such a storyline as it offers everything they are looking for in a quick seasonal romance novel; snow, a Christmas wedding, hustle and bustle of the season, lost love, forgiveness, the importance of family, and a second chance at love all wrapped up with a beautiful bow. The family dynamics and Aunt Agnes’s crazy scones were just the added extras that made this an exceptional read. I could see myself living next door to the Parker family and being welcomed as heartily as Maggie. This novel makes us forget about the virus momentarily and takes us to a time and place where our challenges are forgotten, and we are reminded that family is everything and Christmas together is something to value and appreciate. May we never forget the magic of Christmas.

Thank you to Tanya Jean Russell, Sapere Books and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again, the time when I renew my love/hate relationship with Christmas themed books.

The book opens with Maggie dumped by her boyfriend and her job at the same time as she learns her pap smear has turned up some anomalies. Potential, I think! But no, Russell just squandered it all away… *sigh*

The book just slips into a carbon copy of a million others: Maggie returns to her hometown where her ex, Nathan, lives and who she obviously still has feelings for, she still has to see Nathan as her sister is marrying his brother, she loves Nathan’s family as they all rallied around when her parents were killed, blah blah blah.

The main conflict is that Maggie doesn’t trust Nathan to dump her again as he did when they were younger. This conflict is not enough to sustain the whole book and basically the characters just talk in circles about it until my head hurt. Like so many others, Russell fell into the ‘got to have a high word count’ trap. This book, truly, would have worked better if it was half the size it is. *sigh*

The cancer storyline sounds admirable but... I was looking forward to Russell exploring it more but it was more of an afterthought and a B plot which is glossed over before she got back onto the ''not trusting Nathan to stay with Maggie' bandwagon.

One of my biggest beefs with Christmas books is that a Christmas setting is never an important factor and that it is plainly obvious a lot of these books are written without the theme and then it is added later. I think this is the case again here. There are Christmas scenes here and there but it wouldn’t make any difference to the plot if it was set in the English summer.

Talking of England, Russell’s descriptions overall are a little weak. I also had no sense of an English village at all. In fact, some references sounded very American and wrong. *shrug*

Anyway, An Imperfect Christmas started out promising but, unfortunately, in the end, turned out to be, as the title suggests, less than perfect.

2 out of 5

I read this book as an escape from the day and the world around me. Less than 24 hours later I finished the book with a smile and a bit more holiday spirit in my heart.