I love it! I just love this book so much, I have one complaint and that is that it isn't a full-length, War & Peace-sized volume.

On a more serious note, this is the fourth in the Tinsel and Spruce series from Elna Holst and gives us a look into the lives of the characters from the previous three stories. "And Then They Were Four" could work as a standalone but I would highly recommend the three previous books; Candlelight Kisses, Little x, and Wild Bells as they are a joy to read.

Once again it is Christmas in Malmö and reformed feminist radical Erika/Rickie is tending to the every (and I do mean every) need of her heavily pregnant lover Padma, aka Lucy/Lucia. Rickie's old friends, sisters Mia and Sofie Andersson are having very contrasting Decembers: Mia has just proposed to her girlfriend Sandra Ling, while Sofie is miserable after she left her heart with Roz is New York. I will pause now to say that I am utterly smitten with Roz, they are one of my favourite characters - a delightful combination of charm, confidence, generosity and sweetness. Another one of the old school feminists from the spray-paint days was Helena Hansen, now a respected academic. We haven't really met her in the previous books so her Christmas present is rather different to everyone else's! Mia & Sofie's mother Gunilla also gets her own section here, I won't go into detail but it's wonderful and above all I would love to read more about Gunilla!

This is a sweet and sexy novella and like all of Elna Holst's books I cannot recommend it enough.

And Then They Were Four by Elna Holst
Tinsel and Spruce Needles #4

Short but sweet this had four short Christmas clips from the lives of several people and all of the people in the clips knew or were related to one another.

What I liked:
* That I had a feel for the characters even though I had not read previous stories in the series
* That all four Advent stories overlapped and came together connecting the stories with one another
* The variety
* That there was hope and potential for happiness for all of them
* The love and friendship felt
* A baby born on Christmas Eve
* That no matter what age you are…there is potential for romance
* All of it really except…

What I didn’t like:
* The only thing I didn’t like is not really knowing what will happen in the lives of those I met in this collection.

Did I enjoy this novella? Yes
Would I read more by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and NineStar Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

This is both a sweet and steamy coming together of all of the characters we have met so far in this series. You could read this independently from the rest of the other novellas, but you’d miss a lot so I recommend reading the other three first.

Set in Malmo, Sweden, the novella takes place over four days of advent, with each day focussing on a different person or couple. I really liked all of the stories that appear, but obviously with it being a novella we don’t spend much time with the characters and there were some I really wanted to know more about.

There are some open ends left for characters that weren’t main characters in the previous novellas and I’m glad Holst didn’t feel the need to close these.

I’d recommend reading this series, I read them all in an evening and it made for a nice story when read like this.

I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

An amazing ending to the first series of stories. Steamy experiences and reconnection will leave you wanting more. Interspersed within, we have new life growing and waiting to be birthed. My wish, we have more of Nilla. You will not be disappointed.

This is the fourth book of Holst’s Tinsel and Spruce Needles series that essentially has one book every Christmas – so the title can be as much play about that, as about the arrival of twins.

This book is an update about what’s happening with all the characters from the series. Each of the four chapters gives a peek into a different character’s life. The first chapter has Erika Stolt and Padma Lingren (from Candlelight Kisses) who are about to have twins. The second chapter tells us what’s happening with Helena Hansen (now this is a character who deserves a love story of her own). The third chapter has the Andersson sisters, Mia (Wild Bells) and Fifi (Little x). The final chapter has the birth of the twins and the start of something new for Gunilla Andersson (Mia and Fifi’s mom – and we hope for her story too – though this one is supposed to be the last of the series).

The writing is fluid, the characters – we already like them all from the previous books and they remain great. Love the dialogues and consistency of characterisation across books. All the characters are linked in one way or another but interestingly, each chapter can be read as a short story by itself. Our favourite chapter is the third one – it has the strongest and the most romantic story. It would help if you’ve read the previous books in the series to get a sense of the characters and their relationships. (We’ve missed Candlelight Kisses so our connect with Erika and Padma was limited – though we really liked them individually and together in this one).

The book is rather short and given its length, there are a surprising number of explicit scenes. Since the sex is between different couples, it doesn’t seem like erotica, though a large part of the book is erotica.

This is a short, easy read about people you’ve met and liked earlier.