It’s time for another month of the Unlocking the Past Reading Challenge: Unlock an Adventure. I’m so excited to join you on an adventure this year with guest reviews from our reading challenge participants. If you want to submit a review for upcoming months, feel free to sign up for a month here and use the Google form to submit your review. As my time has become too limited to do a suggestions post each month, I encourage you to jump over to the Unlocking the Past Reading Challenge page and ask for suggestions from there or from any of a number of amazing reader groups like Avid Readers of Christian Fiction or check out the Inspirational Historical Fiction Index.
*The list of prizes available from my prize shelf can be found here.*
December’s Theme: Christmas
January Verse: A time to be born and a time to die.
Challenge Theme: A book with a Baby or End of Life character
Christmas at Whitefriars
by Elizabeth Camden
Review by: Crystal Caudill
I’ve long been a fan of Elizabeth Camden, and I’m slowly working my way through her backlist. This story is a lot of fun, taking place in a castle in England at Christmas. The heroine, Mary, is agoraphobic–meaning she has a fear of leaving her safe little castle, while the hero is a businessman who has a partnership with Whitefriar Castle to license their image for their food products. The interaction between the two is sweet, and one I’m ready to reread again. But can love and marriage happen when the hero, Everett, has to live in New York for his business and Mary can’t even leave her English castle? You’ll have to see how they overcome this obstacle because it’s not what you expect, and I cheered the whole time.
Genre: Historical Romance, 1912, England
Plot Overview:
Mary Beckwith lives in a magnificent English castle during the twilight years of the gilded age. With the help of an American millionaire, she has succeeded in renovating her beloved Whitefriars castle into a splendid estate just in time for Christmas.
From across the ocean, millionaire Everett Wooten has spent a fortune propping up Whitefriars to add modern conveniences and rebuild crumbling old walls. Even though he’s never met Mary, they have enjoyed a lively business correspondence over the nine years they have been working toward a renovation. Now he has finally come to see Mary and the castle in person, but nothing is as he was led to believe.
Mary and Everett try to find a way forward, but red-blooded American entrepreneurship doesn’t always mingle with blue-blooded English tradition. Can a Manhattan business tycoon and an English lady come to an accord, or will their joint venture in Whitefriars result in heartbreak for them both?
Giveaway
For your chance to win a print copy, comment with what book YOU read for this month and you will also be entered into the year-end Grand Prize Reader Basket. Use the Rafflecopter below for extra entries and to mark that you left a comment. Entries end on the 7th of each month at midnight EST, and the winner will be drawn sometime that week and notified by email. The winner will be announced don’t the Rafflecopter widget. (This month is being extended to the 12th, due to my lateness in getting it out.
*Open to all residents of the contiguous USA, legally able to enter, and an e-book format or Amazon Gift Card will be awarded to those outside that range who are legally able to enter.
Recommendations for January:
- The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara Brunsvold (End of Life)
- Something I Haven’t Told You by Pearl Ada Pridham (Baby)
- Where the Blue Sky Begins by Katie Powner (End of Life)
- Chasing Christmas by Teri Blackstock (End of Life)
- This is Where it Ends by Cindy Sproles (End of Life)
- Fragile Designs by Colleen Coble (Baby)
- Because of the Rain by Deborah Raney (Baby – but tough read)
- The Noble Guardian, Michelle Griep (Baby)
- In Harm’s Way by Irene Hannon (Baby)
- Love Finds You in Golden, New Mexico by Lena Nelson Dooley (Baby)
I read The Christmas Swap by Melody Carlson. I always love her sweet books, especially at Christmas. This one had a great setting.
Aww! I’ll have to check it out!
Lord Farleigh and Miss Frost by Sally Britton for me.
That one is on my TBR pile!
I read Karen Witemeyer’s short story My True Love Gave to Me
I loved how she created a story of a Texas version of the twelve days of Christmas. 🙂
I would definitely recommend!
Fun! It was on my TBR pile, but I just never got around to it!
I read Forged in Love by Mary Connealy for July. Mariah Stover is a blacksmith.
That is so cool!
I read Christmas at Whitefriars and loved it! I loved the angst between the H and h, the getting to know you phase and finally the HEA!
I also read The Christmas Foundling by Martha Keyes. It includes the subject of infertility in the regency era. That had to be so difficult. Such a sweet story of the tension in this married couple and trying to move forward. I enjoyed the audiobook on her YouTube channel and also have the ebook.
I also read The Christmas Angel Project by Melody Carlson. This novella is so good. A book club loses their leader…what do they do now? Well, their leader left them with some ideas that grow them beyond where they were in their lives and pulls them closer together. I highly recommend. The audiobook was wonderful, too. It is included with an Audible Plus account.
Nice! I’ll have to check all those out, and YES!!! I loved the angst between the two, and I’m not typically an angsty reader.
I read “Cecil’s Christmas Mail Order Bride” by P. Creeden, and also read “Christmas at Carnton” by Tamera Alexander, which was an enjoyable read, and a great start to that series.
Yay! I’m glad you enjoyed them. I haven’t heard of the first one, so I’ll have to check it out.
I read A Wreath of Snow by Liz Curtis Higgs. I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t a romance per se, though there was a romantic thread towards the end of the book, but it was more about a family struggling at Christmas and the importance of forgiveness.
That sounds a lot like a Liz Curtis Higgs book. 😉 She is such an amazing writer, with deep and sometimes heavy themes.
I read A Royal Christmas by Melody Carlson, Christmas in the Crosshairs by Lynette Eason and others, and We Three Kings. I enjoyed them all, but We Three Kings was my favorite….I liked how the three of you wove the stories together via family!
Aww! I’m so glad you liked it! We had a lot of fun writing it!
I read Joy to the World by Carolyn Miller, Amanda Barratt, and Erica Vetsch. I think the books in this were the first things I read by all of these authors. I also read My True Love Gave to Me and We Three Kings 🙂
I loved Joy to the World. Such a great collection! And thanks for reading We Three Kings!
I read In Harm’s Way by Irene Hannon.
The twin telepathy angle was interesting.
Hi Crystal and good morning. Thank you for sharing this giveaway. I read Stealing the Preacher by Karen Witemeyer (I hope this is how her last name is spelled). Highly recommend it.
That was the book I read with my grandma during our “goodbye” trip. I’ve still never been able to bring myself to finish it, but maybe one day.
I read Second Chance Christmas by Betsy St Amant. I had won the book in a giveaway at the beginning of the month, and I wanted to read and review it in time for Christmas. So naturally I didn’t start it until Christmas day… It’s friends to more, second chance romance, and enemies to lovers all at the same time. Though Love Inspired romance doesn’t really fit what I usually read, this was enjoyable. 7.5/10.
Thank you so much for this reading challenge! I’ve really had a blast. It was the prompt I needed to look through my tbr, and actually read the books that I already owned.
That is great! I hope you’ll join us in the 2024 challenge. I know I’m hoping to pull from my TBR pile this year. 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed Betsy’s book. Like you, I don’t typically do that Love Inspired.