Carol, Reviewer for More than a Review
I was recently given the privilege to review three novellas (contained within a boxed set) entitled The Gingerbread Men Anthology. All three novellas are set in a small town in Maine called Christmas Town and focus on a mother and her two daughters. The first of the three, The Gingerbread Heart, focuses on the mother, Cassandra Logan. At fifty-two years of age, Cass finds herself lost and lonely. Her husband had died suddenly eighteen months prior and she has been caring for her Alzheimer’s stricken mother in Indiana since shortly after his death. With the passing of her mother, she decides to return to Christmas Town to be near her daughters. With too much time on her hands and too much grief in her heart, a friend encourages her to apply for a job as a personal assistant. Much to her surprise, she finds herself as the personal assistant to her favorite writer and a man she knew as the preacher at a local church when she had resided in Christmas Town previously. The developing relationship between Cass and Elijah Welcome is heartwarming. The novella gets its name from the homemade gingerbread ornaments that Cass is famous for making each Christmas holiday.
The second book, The Gingerbread Pony, focuses on Amy. Amy, a divorced speech therapist, lives in the farmhouse where she was raised and operates a clinic for children where she uses horses to help her patients with speech disorders. Amy is offered an opportunity to travel to Texas and work alongside one of the best speech pathologists. As she is preparing to leave Christmas Town, she is asked to evaluate a child who is suffering from selective mutism following the tragic death of her mother. Reluctantly she agrees to an evaluation only. Mark Bradford arrives to the consultation with his daughter Elizabeth. Amy finds herself face-to-face with her high school sweetheart.
The third book, The Gingerbird House, focuses on Lia. Lia operates a rescue shelter on the portion of the farm that she inherited from her father. The shelter is in financial jeopardy so Lia decides to move from her apartment into a cabin on the land. Much to her surprise she finds someone already living there. Having lost his woodworking business, Quinn and his son Jax are now homeless. To add to their dilemma, Quinn’s ex-wife is trying to get custody of Jax. Needing a place to hide, they travel to the farm where his grandfather lived and where Quinn spent his younger years. Lia agrees to allow Quinn and Jax to stay in the cabin in exchange for repair work that needed to be done. Quinn builds Lia a beautiful Victorian style bird house as a gift. Lia is extremely impressed with the quality of work and the attention to detail. She asks him to build more Gingerbird houses as gifts for her family, thus the name for the novella. Just as a relationship starts to build between Quinn and Lia, the ex-wife shows up in Christmas Town.
If you enjoy clean, heartwarming romances set around the holidays, you won’t want to miss The Gingerbread Men anthology.