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Review: Snowbound at Christmas by Jennifer Ryan, Lia Riley, and Maisey Yates

By Cheryl Wassenaar

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Although Thanksgiving is next week, we take a look at a new holiday romance anthology, Snowbound at Christmas. Which novellas stood out?

Yours truly feels like she hasn’t had enough time to enjoy a few pumpkin-spice-flavored foodstuffs, and eagerly awaits Thanksgiving. All of that aside, most of the world has already moved on to the holidays, and, more specifically, Christmas. That includes the world of romance novels, where new novels as fresh as snow have already started falling onto shelves. One of the latest is Snowbound at Christmas from Avon, an anthology featuring novellas from Jennifer Ryan, Lia Riley, and Maisey Yates. If the title doesn’t give it away, each novella involves a snowstorm around the holidays.

Rather than rate the book overall, we’ll go over each novella one by one, briefly discussing the high and low points.

Close to Perfect – Jennifer Ryan

Jennifer Ryan’s “Close to Perfect” serves as an entry in her Montana Men series. Our protagonists are Dex Manning and Abigail Swain. Ten years ago as high school sweethearts, they were separated, and Abby left town. Now, she’s back — with her and Dex’s daughter, Kelly. This one scores 2.5/5 stars.

Overall, the concept is pretty charming. Ryan also doesn’t introduce Kelly only to shove her aside. Indeed, Dex proves himself willing to adapt to the fact that he has a child quite quickly. (He has to, though; this is a novella, remember?)

However, on the other hand, the novella has to squeeze a lot into a very short amount of pages, although it appears to be the longest of the three. Some details can get lost in the shuffle as a result. At one point, it felt like the narrative was trying to juggle three separate plots, and the romance ended up seeming like a low priority.

Ultimately, it sort of reminded me of a Hallmark movie in how sweet it is. That’s not necessarily a knock on it, but it isn’t high praise, either.

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Ryan’s included excerpt comes from His Cowboy Heart. 

Hot Winter’s Night – Lia Riley

Lia Riley’s “Hot Winter’s Night” comes from her Brightwater series. Marigold Flint (Goldie, thank you very much) found herself left behind at eighteen when Kitridge Kane (Kit, which only brings to mind the idea of a Kit-Kat flavored candy cane, which also probably exists) joined the Marines. Now, though, he’s back and working in the sheriff’s department, and when a snowstorm threatens to ruin all of Goldie’s plans, Kit has to step in. This one turned out to be my favorite of the three, and it gets 4/5 stars.

On the positive side, there’s a lot to like about this one. The banter between Kit and Goldie is playful and pretty funny at points. The narration doesn’t shy away from making a holiday pun or two. Furthermore, the romance scene, though short, waggled some eyebrows nevertheless. In fact, this novella actually intrigued me in the Brightwater series overall.

On the negative side, we actually wish it were a little bit longer. It doesn’t have the same issue of “Close to Perfect,” where there’s too many story lines at once, but it does feel a bit more compressed towards the end nevertheless.

Riley’s included excerpt comes from Last First Kiss.

Snowed in at Copper Ridge Lodge – Maisey Yates

“Snowed in at Copper Ridge Lodge” comes from Maisey Yates’ Copper Ridge series, surprisingly. Mia Landry should not have any sort of feelings for Devlin Grayson, especially when she’s about to spend the holidays with him and his entire family in a cabin. However, a snowstorm means that Devlin and Mia are alone together, and sparks start flying quickly. This one scores a solid 3/5 stars.

In terms of things we liked, the novella actually turns out to be quite funny at points. You wouldn’t think that a sandwich-as-sex metaphor would work, but Yates manages to pull it off and elicit a laugh or smile from a reader while she’s at it. Additionally, the romantic scenes turned out to be pretty good.

In terms of things we didn’t like, this one also felt rushed. It could have done with a few more pages to stretch the narrative out a bit more, because it felt like Yates compressed a 300-page romance novel, with all the usual tropes included, into fewer than 70 pages by my count. All of the standard beats (sex scene, dramatic breakup, love confession) come within pages of each other.

Yates’ included excerpt is from Slow Burn Cowboy.

Next: Review: Heartless by Marissa Meyer

Overall, this anthology turns out to be quite strong. For Christmas romance fans, it’d make a solid Saturday afternoon read with some cocoa or another warm beverage of your choosing. “Hot Winter’s Night” stands out as the clear winner in our book, but none of the three novellas are really bad.

Although Snowbound at Christmas is available digitally starting November 15, physical copies won’t go on sale until December 13, according to Amazon.

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