Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

September 6, 2010
Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon) finds a little romantic magic in this spritely charmer. Mark Nolan's happy-go-lucky bachelorhood is interrupted by the death of his sister and his subsequent guardianship of her six-year-old daughter, Holly, who is traumatized into muteness and desperately seeking a maternal figure. Enter Maggie Collins, a toy shop owner who lost her own husband to cancer. As the holiday season draws closer, Maggie, Mark, and Holly begin to spend more time together, and Maggie and Mark's attraction becomes too powerful to ignore. Kleypas's holiday offering is sweet, romantic, and genuine, and avoids, thankfully, all the cheesy holiday miracle clichés. A solid romance with strong leads, this is a refreshing holiday treat.

Starred review from October 15, 2010

Thrown into instant fatherhood when his sister is killed in a car accident and he becomes the guardian of six-year-old Holly, practical, no-nonsense businessman Mark Nolan needs all the help he can get. He just doesn't expect it to come from imaginative Maggie Collins, the young, insightful widowed owner of the Friday Harbor toy store, who uses a "magic" conch shell to coax Holly to say her first words since the accident. Intrigued by Holly's immediate connection to a virtual stranger and curious about Maggie, Mark soon realizes she is "The One." Now he just needs to wait for Maggie to be brave enough to risk her heart once more. VERDICT With the perfect amount of local San Juan Island detail, an abundance of realistic, appealing characters, and a new take on the classic "bachelor father" plot, this well-written, heartwarming, gently humorous story is a charmer from start to finish. Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon) lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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