"Once Upon a Christmas" by Lauraine Snelling and Lenora Worth

There's something about Christmastime that makes me enjoy cozying up with fluffy, festive romances.  Maybe it's because my life often gets busy, so I don't have energy to follow something deep or difficult.  Maybe it's just the generally cozy cheer of the season.  I don't know.  Anyway, Once Upon a Christmas is two fluffy, festive romances in one volume that I probably wouldn't have even picked up any other time of year.  But the week before Christmas, they were just what I wanted.

In "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Lauraine Snelling, an overworked creative consultant with a dog she loves and a family she avoids meets up with a harried computer tech who's just had to take in his toddler niece because his sister landed in jail.  Which all sounds kind of heavy, and there's definitely some depth to this story that I wasn't expecting, but also plenty of cheery fluff to keep the overall atmosphere light.  

In "'Twas the Week Before Christmas" by Lenora Worth, a pretty Southern belle returns to her grandmother's Louisiana manor for a big family Christmas and falls hard for the handsome, scruffy groundskeeper that her grandmother more or less sets her up with.  This one has a lot more oohing and ahhing over muscles and jawlines and eyes and hair, but I kept envisioning Pierre Jalbert as the Cajun groundskeeper, so I would've been oohing and ahhing over muscles and jawlines and eyes and hair if I'd been the belle, too.  

Of the two stories, I liked Snelling's the most, but I enjoyed Worth's too.  I don't think this is a book I'll reread, but it was just what I needed at the time.

Particularly Good Bits:

After two days of fog and rain, which left her feeling out of sorts, the sun felt like a gift she almost didn't open (p. 13, "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year").

"I believe we can do anything as long as we trust in God and listen to my grand-mere" (p. 296, "'Twas the Week Before Christmas").

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for quite a bit of admiring of the opposite sex, a few nice kisses, and some discussion in the first story of drug use (not engaged in by any characters on the page).

This is my 61st book read off my shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021.