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The first thing I do to kick off the Christmas season (besides, of course, cranking up the season début of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You) is get out my old anthologies and read a Carla Kelly Christmas short story. The last thing I do on Christmas Eve before I turn out the lights is also read a Carla Kelly Christmas short story. And during the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday stretch, when I’m feeling a bit stressed and want to recapture the spirit of the season, what I do is… read a Carla Kelly Christmas short story. To put it bluntly, I need a lot of Carla Kelly Christmas short stories. Therefore, I’m delighted that she has delivered two more classics (along with one less successful story) in this anthology of all-new stories.
The Lasting Gift
Grade: B Sensuality: Kisses
In Plymouth, Mary Ann Poole, soldier’s widow and mother of a young daughter, Beth, has just received notice of her impending dismissal from her post as a lady’s secretary when she receives a mis-delivered package from Sailing Master Thomas Jenkins. Returning the package sets off a chain of events in which Thomas decides to help the Pooles to alleviate his boredom ashore but finds himself falling for Mary Ann instead. This is a lovely, gentle story about sustainable gifts, not just charity (Jenkins wants to find employment for Mary Ann and education for math prodigy Beth), but it’s ‘classic Kelly’ in the sense that I’ve read this sailor-ashore-rescues-virtuous-woman story before. Just off the top of my head, it’s the premise for Christmas Promise and A Christmas in Paradise.
Is that a problem? Well, if you’re reading them all back-to-back like I do, you might feel that they’re repetitive. I also feel that this isn’t her best example of that trope. Thomas fell in love quickly, and I didn’t see a lot of common ground between the couple beyond their joint project of helping Mary Ann and Beth. But mostly, it’s like eating Christmas cookies: it may be the same recipe you made last year, but that’s kind of the point.
Faithfully Yours
Grade: B- Sensuality: Kisses
John McPherson has been faithfully corresponding with Margaret Hamilton since he left Dumfries in Scotland to make his fortune in Canada. Except bratty Margaret only promised to write to John as a prank, so John’s actual correspondent is Sally Wilson, who couldn’t stomach the cruel joke. I liked the fact that this story wasn’t a classic Big Mis, as John has his suspicions about the woman who’s writing to him. What I didn’t like was the fact that Margaret is punished at the end. Since all was well that ended well, I didn’t feel that such an ending was really in the Christmas spirit (in fact, this story didn’t have much of a Christmas feel at all, and could have been set at any time of year.) The story also suffers from being half the length of the other two, and as the courtship happens in letters which we don’t read, I was not as invested in the characters. However, I liked the details introduced about John’s rise to success in the new world, and I enjoyed the trader-adventurer hero as a new type for Kelly.
Lucy’s Bang-up Christmas
Grade: A Sensuality: Kisses
In my favorite story of the anthology, Lucy Danforth’s cousin Miles Bledsoe come to visit as Lucy’s overwhelmed family prepares not only for their first Christmas since Lucy’s mother died, but also for the wedding of Lucy’s older sister. Lucy decides to honor her mother by doing charitable Christmas work, but when the vicar challenges her to save a war widow and her three children, Lucy realizes that more than a holiday basket is called for. Unlike the one-note villainous Margaret in the previous story, the antagonist characters here (like a prickly aunt) are understandable and sympathetic in their own ways – the sort of nuanced portrayal Kelly is so good at. Two of my favorite story themes come together here, as the hero and heroine work as a team and also help each other become better people.
This story also has the strongest and best Christmas message: Lucy’s mother’s dying request that Lucy “do, rather than just be.” While this idea of meaningful, enduring charity work is similar to the idea expressed in the first story, I liked how the giving in Bang-up Christmas is explicitly tied to celebrating Christmas rather than something that happens between the hero and heroine. I liked the equality of Lucy and Miles better than the slightly off-putting blurring of gratitude and attraction between Thomas and Mary Ann. I did notice a few writing glitches (for instance, Lucy is described as “with a full heart” three times in five pages, one time accidentally written as “wit a full heart”).
For my future Christmas reading, I’ll probably skip that short middle story, but the other two are lovely tales which fit right into my annual festive binge. My biggest criticism is the pricey paperback edition, which reflects the larger trade paperback size. It really should have been a standard paperback closer in price to the very affordable $5.95 Kindle edition. But if you’re a Kelly collector like me, it may be worth it to splurge on the paper copy anyway.
Buy it at: Amazon or shop at your local independent bookstore
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Kisses
Review Date: 09/10/20
Publication Date: 09/2015
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm a history geek and educator, and I've lived in five different countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. In addition to the usual subgenres, I'm partial to YA, Sci-fi/Fantasy, and graphic novels. I love to cook.
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Thanks so much for your kind comments. It’s nice to be re-read. Last year’s “Regency Royal Navy Christmas” continued the Christmas story tradition. There’s a new one for 2020 in an anthology titled, “A Hopeful Christmas.” and I just completed an edit of a short story for 2021 in Harlequin’s Christmas collection. I’m thinking about a four-story collection featuring my Gunwharf Rats from the St. Brendan Series (which is continuing, BTW). Good thing I enjoy Christmas. More than that, I value my readers. Thanks for what you do for me.
I’m looking forward to “A Hopeful Christmas” – your Christmas stories are my holiday gift to me! I do enjoy all of your stories year round though ….happy to hear that the St. Brendan Series is continuing too! Hooray! Thank you!
Just ordered A Hopeful Christmas. It’s never too early for Christmas anthologies for me and yours are amongst my favourites.
What a joy to see you here! I was hoping you’d see the lovely and appreciative comments here. Your books are genuinely beloved and mean so much to so many of us. Thank you for writing them!
Oh how lovely to see you here. Thank you.
I am married to a surgeon and one of my pet peeves is when medicine is misrepresented in romance. I just re-read The Surgeon’s Lady and recommended it to my husband. He’s always raving about the Jack Aubrey novels and I thought he’d enjoy your book. He did!
Lt. Brittle is on my top ten list of heroes for certain. He’s the most wonderful mix of strength and kindness. It’s one of my most re-read Carla Kelly books.
I thought I had read every Carla Kelly short story and I am delighted to find there are still a couple I haven’t caught up with yet.
She is the kind of author that manages to leave you with a feeling of peace and general good will that is really the perfect marriage for Christmas stories. There’s a lovely gentle quality to her writing, even when dealing with truly difficult or upsetting material. I am not sure how she does it but I am a huge fan of hers.
FYI this is a rerun review, just in case anybody was wondering if the stories are new.
Thanks, I was just about to check my keeper shelf as I could have sworn I’d read and enjoyed the third story. That’s a compliment to Kelly’s writing skills as I’m like Caroline in getting my Christmas fix from her short stories.
I love Carla Kelly, not only for her historical knowledge and flavor, but because her men are the best. They are not flashy, sometimes not rich or particularly handsome, but they are good, thoughtful, self-sacrificing men who do what needs to be done in the best way they can. They have ideals, but are never preachy. They are the embodiment of the virtue we seem to have abandoned: honor.
Yes, yes and yes. That’s exactly what her characters in general embody: honor, a quiet dignity and a great sense of personal responsibility.
Those aren’t the characteristics that sound “super sexy” when you type them out but they make for amazing, incredibly moving characters.
When I fist started reading romances 10 years or so ago, I heard about two authors that were mostly out-of-print: Georgette Heyer and Carla Kelly. For the next few years I scoured every used book store I could find and found several books by both authors. I loved every one I read. Slowly, Heyer was reprinted in paperback and I found Carla Kelly ebooks. These two authors are different in style, but there is something wonderful about both. Kelly writes characters with quiet dignity and, as you said, honor. Her newer books haven’t been as much to my tastes, but I treasure all her older novels. I think Beau Crusoe is one of the best depictions of PTSD ever written in a romance.
I totally agree about Carla Kelly’s heroes. They are generally considered beta, but to my mind the distinction is meaningless here. Too many alphas are simply large men who use their physicality to get their way, whereas Carla Kelly’s heroes are thoughtful, sometimes torn, but always — always — drawn to do right. They stand for dignity and strength in the best ways, and often do it with self-deprecating humor that makes them deliciously attractive (to me at least). I should also mention that I recently went through my books and donated hundreds, but every single one of my Carla Kelly’s remains on my bookshelf.