Acquired Book By: I started hosting with Prism Book Tours at the end of [2017], having noticed the badge on Tressa’s blog (Wishful Endings) whilst I was visiting as we would partake in the same blog tours and/or book blogosphere memes. I had to put the memes on hold for several months (until I started to resume them (with Top Ten Tuesday) in January 2018). When I enquiried about hosting for Prism, I found I liked the niche of authors and stories they were featuring regularly. I am unsure how many books I’ll review for them as most are offered digitally rather than in print but this happily marks one of the blog tours where I could receive a print book for review purposes. Oft-times you’ll find Prism Book Tours alighting on my blog through the series of guest features and spotlights with notes I’ll be hosting on behalf of their authors.
I received a complimentary copy of “A Small Town Christmas” direct from the author Nan Reinhardt in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Why Jorie loves Christmas Romances:
Last year, I had a better start on showcasing my love of Christmas Romances & holiday stories – where I was featuring interviews and spotlights throughout the holiday season – leading up to the Christmastide directly! This year, I was focusing on seeking new holiday reads to enjoy this year as well as seeing if any of the previous years’ finds were finally available to be borrowed through my local library! Thereby, I am thankful I was able to find a few blog tours to join this year, which continue the festive celebrations on Jorie Loves A Story!
I personally love being caught up in a Christmas Romance due to the holidays themselves but also, how forgiving this season can be! It is a time of renewal and of peace – it is interesting how the season itself lends well to telling Romance. Showcasing how relationships can become built even if (characters) first feel this is the wrong time for them personally or professionally. Christmas Romances tuck me into different celebrations & traditions; uniquely arrive at different moments in time (between Contemporary & Historical settings) and give you a happiness of an afterglow for reading them the same way I feel whenever I watch the Christmas films on tv or dvd.
My favourite channel for the holidays is Hallmark, due to how light-hearted the Christmas Romances are and how they give you a drama on their sister channel Movies & Mysteries. Similarly, you could say what I read and watch during the holiday season (strictly from either late October til Twelfth Night in January) are fuelled by unexpected circumstances, arcs of forgiveness or redemption whilst the better bit is how a relationship can find traction at one of the most beautiful times we can experience in-season! The weather isn’t as harsh (wells unless your in a place that regularly gets hard-hitting blizzards!) and there is something sweet in the air.
I find these kinds of stories purely uplifting and that is why I continuously seek them out!
A Small Town Christmas
Subtitle: Four Irish Brothers Winery
by Nan Reinhardt
Source: Author via Prism Book Tours
Winemaker and single father Conor Flaherty is determined to make this Christmas holiday special for his daughter even though his family’s winery, Four Irish Brothers, is facing some challenges.
High-octane Chicago attorney Samantha Hayes is looking forward to some delicious food, fine wine, small town charm, and a break from her hectic big city life when she agrees to do a favor for her boss and help his younger brother with a lawsuit that’s been slapped on his family’s historic winery in River’s Edge. She’s not expecting that her sexy new client will have a smile that will melt her heart and remind her that there’s more to life than work.
Sam falls hard for Conor, his daughter and the small, friendly town, but can she trust her instincts and risk her heart? Sam hasn’t seen a lot of happy-ever-afters in her life, but Conor and the magic of Christmas make her want to believe.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9181949707113
Published by Tule Publishing
on 29th October, 2018
Format: POD | Print On Demand Paperback
Pages: 260
Published by: Tule Publishing (@TulePublishing)
under their imprint American Heart
NOTE: Although in the print edition this imprint isn’t mentioned on the copyright page. I believe this is strictly an in-house classification to help readers direct themselves to the kinds of stories they desire to be reading. Each imprint on Tule’s site explains the imprint’s core empathsis – which is why this particular one focuses on small townes, urban life, American culture and HEA with a sexiness heart.
Read more about Tule Publishing | via author Jane Porter’s blog
I’ve been wanting to begin reading the novels of Ms Porter for the past several years – I have a few of them on hand actually, only regretfully they are not quite accessible! (hard to explain – most of my personal library is not yet unpacked) I’ve been visiting her website off/on since 2013 whilst I also follow her writerly career on Twitter – though somewhere between life and tides, I’ve overlooked quite an important milestone of her life: she’s developed a publishing company for Romance & Women’s Fiction authors! I look forward to browsing their catalogue, sorting out which authors are published into print and seeing if I can start requesting more of their titles via my local library! Either directly (via purchase requests) or through ILL’ing them! (inter-library loaning)
Formats Available: Paperback* and Ebook
Uniquely enough, I couldn’t find links routing to the print copy I have myself via LibraryThing; even after I keyed in the ISBN on the copyright page. I also noticed the print edition is not listed on retail outlets or GoodReads. I am unsure when the print copy will start to show online, however, I know this title did release into paperback and I am thankful it had in order for me to have a chance to read it. Except, I did consider I might have an ARC – hopefully the print release will be easier to track in forthcoming months or after the New Year begins.
This marks the first story in the series which will feature the following characters:
Conor, Sean, Brendan, and Aidan Flaherty. The series begins with Conor’s story!
Converse via: #Contemporary #ChristmasRomance
& #FourIrishBrothersWinery
About Nan Reinhardt
Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today-bestselling author of romantic fiction for women in their prime. Yeah, women still fall in love and have sex, even after 45! Imagine! She is a wife, a mom, a mother-in-law, and a grandmother. Nan has been a copyeditor and proofreader for over 25 years, and currently works on romantic fiction titles for a variety of clients, including Avon Books, St. Martin’s Press, Kensington Books, Tule Publishing, and Entangled Publishing, as well as for many indie authors.
Although she loves her life as an editor, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten, a love story between the most sophisticated person she knew at the time, her older sister (who was in high school and had a driver’s license!), and a member of Herman’s Hermits. If you remember who they are, you are Nan’s audience! Her latest novel, A Small Town Christmas, which is the first book in the Four Irish Brothers Winery series from Tule Publishing, releases on October 29, 2018.
Visit Nan’s website at www.nanreinhardt.com, where you’ll find links to all her books as well as blogs about writing, being a Baby Boomer, and aging gracefully…mostly. Nan also blogs every sixth Wednesday at Word Wranglers, sharing the spotlight with five other romance authors and is a frequent contributor the RWA Contemporary Romance blog, and she contributes to the Romance University blog where she writes as Editor Nan.
my review of a small town christmas:
Ever begin a story reading about a character your about to become familiar with savouring the delightfulness of experiencing an unexpected meal at a dive diner they never knew they would crave returning too as it was a lark of a chance of even being there in the first place?! Thus, begins Reinhardt’s novel – wherein we’re all but hankering for a piece of that pecan pie and a warm plateful of the dumplings, peas and biscuits! My mouth is still watering and I had turkey chili with a spicy warm chai!
One of the added bonuses (early-on disclosure wise) is our soon-to-be heroine of this story Sam (short for Samantha) is two and thirty years and comes from a long line of rule-breakers when it comes to the aging process! You have to smile when a character happily exclaims they can eat whatever they want due to a high metabolic rate which shouldn’t decrease by menopause whilst those round them are turning more shades of green than you believe possible! I agree – sometimes it is unfair how most women find their bodies are changing lightning quick in most instances and others, seem to float on air through their years – to where they don’t see stark changes or milestones like others do. Clearly, Sam had a gene pool blessing her to avoid the awkwardness of her middle years and she could continue to enjoy what life brought her way.
You can’t predict car trouble – you can try to avoid it, best you can with maintenance and insurance, but in the end, the car itself is what dictates where you will be when something drops left of centre and leaves you without a way to drive! Everyone has been there – the fuel gauge malfunctions, the tires run over nails falling off trucks or the weather plays a hand in where you end up after the worst bit moves along to pester a different area. You feel for Sam, you truly do – how she feels she’s facing an impossible situation but in the end, there are far worse things than busted tires in the middle of a heavy rain storm!
Some of the best ways characters can meet for me are when they are in a situation they hadn’t foreseen – where they stumble upon someone or whether weather plays a part – the curious thing is how Reinhardt approached this ‘meet-cute’ opportunity between Sam and Conor. I truly appreciated how she showed Conor’s interactions with his young daughter who was in the car with him – as it felt organically real and authentic. There are stories I’ve read where either the adults feel more realistic to me or the children steal the scenes outright from the adults. Sometimes I feel the children are not given enough time to feel present in-scene or as a key component of a character’s life. Reinhardt truly gave me a scene where I felt she understood how to develop the quiet familiarity a parent would have with their child alongside the curiosity of an outsider who wanted to say or do more but felt like it wasn’t their place to insert themselves. She balanced this from Conor’s perspective but also, left a small door open for Sam – giving her a sensibility of awareness towards Conor and the young child but kept her a bit removed from the situation as well. It was the mark of good instincts and I loved how the pacing of these characters randomly meeting felt organic and not forced.
As we sort through the specifics of why Sam is enroute to the winery – why her legal advise is dire and necessary to be received by Conor, we start to see how the winery itself has a proprietary issue in who can claim the rights to the winery vs who is the rightful owner(s). You can respect how this can happen when there is a death in a family or when a business can become disputed for ownership if there are outside influences without as rightful of a claim as they think they have on a legacy business grown in a family for generations. This is the kind of dramatic edge you’d expect to find erupting out of the blue for a hard-working Irish family who carved out their own livelihood after leaving Ireland. The upsetting bit is how do you combat a claim you never thought you’d have to defend?
The scene which truly stuck with me was a flashback to a difficult memory spun out of Sam’s years as an attorney for domestic violence victims and their children – it was centred on the last case Sam took-on which led to a tragic ending. What was incredible is how in such a short expanse of space, Reinhardt pulls you in through the emotional depth we needed to better understand Sam; to feel her internal pain and to see why being here, in this small towne away from the throes of her previous life, she could feel like she could heal or at least, place more distance between herself, the past and where her heart called her to roam. When you lose your will to keep a passion in your life rooted on your path – a change of scenery or a reconsideration of your future is sometimes what leads us towards a new kind of freedom in our lives. I was thinking this is what Sam needed most – a place to find solace and to forgive herself for the wrongs she was never responsible for but carried the guilt nonetheless.
I must admit – I love staying at Bed & Breakfast Inns – you get the wonderful homemade foods Sam is devouring with a ravished joyfulness whilst you get individualised upgrades from the innkeepers! This is definitely becoming a story my bookish and foodie heart is appreciating for how wicked wonderful it is we get to almost smell the foods Sam is eating as Reinhardt finds a classy way of bringing the food into the foreground of the story-line!
Smitten by the unexpected is what you would consider the truth of how Conor reacted to Sam when they met for the first time after the rainstorm! This was new for Conor, how a woman such as Sam could randomly re-enter his life, twist himself into an emotional connective firestorm of curiosity and still have the ability to disarm him with her smile! You definitely get caught up in his thoughts and how he’s trying to rationalise his reactions – almost as if he can’t quite fathom how he can feel something after a period of emotional drought. Counter to his reaction, we find Sam rather hard to read – she is intrigued by the bloke, curious over the wine and has a firm appreciation for high-end gourmet cheese; yet, does she feel the same kinetic sparks? Or is she trying to downplay what she’s feeling because it doesn’t fit within her plans? She seems the kind who has everything ink out and scheduled; including romance!
I personally love when family are inclusive to a relationship-based Romance (hence why I recently loved reading Karen Rock’s Rocky Mountain Cowboy series) – in this one, we are privy to the four brothers who make the winery a legacy business as they are the sole inheritors of their parents’ dream whilst through Sam, we find Aunt Bette. A carefree Auntie who was in her mid-twenties when Sam was a young girl – thereby giving them a solid chance to have a close-knit friendship and connection as the years progressed. If you come from a close-knit family you’ll pick up on the nuances and the subtle ways this niece and Aunt are hugged close to the hip whilst celebrating the fact Sam has a reliable confidante to help guide her when life throws her a few surprises she’s uncertain how to process.
One thing you have to remember whilst your reading A Small Town Christmas is to find some of your favourite bits of chocolate and have a hearty glass of your favourite red wine on hand to enjoy consuming as you read the story! Each time I read Conor and Sam were enjoying a bit of wine, it made me slightly envious as previously stated, the foodie in me was loving this book! You can’t help but feel caught up inside the bubbling romance arising out of circumstantial situations which placed Sam and Conor in close quarters! The food, the wine and the magic bursting between these two was lovely to observe as they truly were an equal match for each other.
The towne itself is beyond charming – the kind of small towne atmosphere you can soak inside, find your spirit lighter and feel joyful just to walk down the street! There are plenty of quirky characters inside the story – alongside the quirky dives where the locals love to eat and where gourmet foodies can find their palettes challenged and comfortably in the bliss of well-prepared foods! I was convinced myself that these places were IRL due to how well attune Reinhardt was at giving us a presentation of their spaces within the space of the towne. I wouldn’t be surprised if this story held roots of a towne which shared the quirks and quaintness of this one as you would simply expect you could drive here and see what Sam saw herself.
I love the whole community really – where everyone genuinely cares about each other and where you can have happenstance conversations, random encounters and take your life off the setting of a clock and enjoy a slower pace. The beauty of course is the pacing, the ways in which your allowed to drink in the setting alongside Sam and offer a hopeful wish towards Conor to realise that sometimes the unexpected in life can provide good tidings rather than sorrow.
I’ve been looking for stories like this one – I think I’ve found a new publisher to seek them from as if other Tule writers take a similar approach in narrative and character development as Reinhardt did with A Small Town Christmas I am in for more sweetness and spice arriving in my bookish life! The only downside is I couldn’t sort out which titles are currently released in print – as I love the portable size of their paperbacks and how the font is easy on the eyes. For a migraineur I have to look at things a bit differently now and the gentleness of the story, the pure happiness of meeting characters who were writ realistically humbled and of whom you rally behind because who doesn’t want to read a story about second-chance love at Christmastime? Bring on the next installments, please – I want to return inside this world!
Content Note: Age of Character
There was only one concern I had about Ali, the young daughter of Conor in the story? I loved how she was portrayed but for me personally, she spoke closer to the age of a five, six or seven year old than a four year old? As the story progressed, I was questioning how well her vocabulary was becoming and how her sentences felt ‘older’ than what a four year old would normally be vocalising. Still. I loved her presence in the story and each time she was in-scene it felt right somehow and natural. Aside from how she talked, of course.
on the christmas romance styling of nan reinhardt:
I did some research about Ms Reinhardt before I started reading A Small Town Christmas – I love reading all the extras inclusive of novels – yes, that includes what is written in the back of novels, the Appendixes I’m addicted to so dearly and the notes, acknowledgements and all the other lovely bits which make reading a lovely adventure for me as a reader! As a writer, it is a lovely introduction to someone new I’m about to ‘meet’ against the page – thus, after I consumed her biography I quickly found her website and did some more digging. Finding out we both love helping writers – as she’s a freelance editor whereas I’m a betareader.
Learning a bit more about her personal journey to Tule Publishing was rather smashing as much as learning there is a quartet! If you spend enough time with me on Jorie Loves A Story, you know I have an affinity for serial fiction (irregardless of genre!) – where I love returning time and again to characters who are breathed to life so lovingly, you can’t help but feel instantly connected to their world, their lives and the pursuit they take towards happiness.
I feel like these characters have lived before we enter their lives in this installment of the series – a credit to the author whose writing a four book arc of their adventures! I have a feeling the reason I feel like this is a story in the middle of being lived is due to how Ms Reinhardt planned it out – how we move through flashbacks of memories from Sam, how closely we hug into their reactions of tasting food and wine; how being in this small towne is affecting Sam’s mental health and of how sometimes, being elsewhere for a period of time is the best gift you can give yourself!
Her instincts for setting the scenes to be a bit random and allow her characters the room to breathe is one of the things I loved most about reading A Small Town Christmas!
In order to feel connected to the Irish heroes of this story, I settled on listening to Irish Ballard’s via #Spotify to have myself a dash of the joy of reading about Irish Romantic Heroes! I ended up finding over six different playlists I want to listen to in the future – as I have a personal love & joy in hearing Celtic & Irish music – hearing the songs and reading this novel became a lovely experience! I love finding a ‘soundscape’ which befits a story I am reading as it adds another dimension of immersion for me!
Do you love reading Christmas / holiday Romances?
Which do you prefer the most? The ones set in modern times or the Historical past?
This blog tour is courtesy of: Prism Book Tours
You might want to follow the rest of the tour, as like most of the tours I host for PRISM, there are bookaways and/or giveaways attached to the tours.
Although, I do not host the giveaways myself – you can tuck close to the tour’s route and see what you can discover by clicking the banner – finding the rest of the bloggers participating & ENJOY some #randomJOY!
{SOURCES: Cover art of “A Small Town Christmas”, the synopsis, the author photo of Nan Reinhardt and her biography as well as the blog tour banner for this tour were all provided by Prism Book Tours and used with permission. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets embedded by codes provided by Twitter. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: Book Review Banner using Unsplash.com (Creative Commons Zero) Photography by Frank McKenna and the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2018.
I am a social reader | I tweet my reading life:
#JorieReads | stories for #blogmas#ChristmasRomance
Grateful to @PrismBookTours introducing me to @TulePublishing I feel like these characters have lived before we enter their lives – Nan Reinhardt shines!✍️
🍷https://t.co/lCeLLqwwYk | #bookreview#FourIrishBrothersWinery🍇 pic.twitter.com/FfYxJPQGig
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) November 2, 2018
Definitely was a story my bookish & foodie heart appreciated for how wicked wonderful it is we almost smell the foods Sam is eating as @NanReinhardt finds a classy way to put the food into the foreground!
🍷#bookreview | 1st of #FourIrishBrothersWinery https://t.co/lCeLLqwwYk
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) November 2, 2018
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- #blogmas 2018
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