Take Me Home For Christmas by Brenda Novak

• Title:  Take Me Home For Christmas
• Series:  Whiskey Creek #5
  
• Author:  Brenda Novak
• Genre:  Contemporary Romance; Christmas
• Published:  October 2013 – Harlequin MIRA
• Source:  Publisher

Synopsis:  Christmas is a time for remembering…

Too bad not all memories are pleasant! Everyone in Whiskey Creek remembers Sophia DeBussi as the town’s Mean Girl. Especially Ted Dixon, whose love she once scorned.

But Sophia has paid the price for her youthful transgressions. The man she did marry was rich and powerful but abusive. So when he goes missing, she secretly hopes he’ll never come back—until she learns that he died running from an FBI probe of his investment firm. Not only has he left Sophia penniless, he’s left her to face all the townspeople he cheated.…

Sophia is reduced to looking for any kind of work to pay the bills and support her daughter. With no other options, she becomes housekeeper for none other than Ted, now a successful suspense writer. He can’t bring himself to turn his back on her, not at Christmas, but he refuses to get emotionally involved. He learned his lesson the last time.

Or will the season of love and forgiveness give them both another chance at happiness? (publisher)

My take:  When Sophia and Ted were in high school they were madly in love and planned to spend the rest of their lives together. Things changed though and Sophia ended up married to a wealthy and emotionally and physically abusive man. Fourteen years later, Sophia finds herself a widowed mother, broke, and working for the last person she’d expect to be her employer. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Sophia has no choice if she wants to provide for her daughter. She needs to save money so she and Alexa can move away from Whiskey Creek and make a new life where no one knows them.

Ted tried to get over Sophia after she married another man but he never quite did. He became a successful author but hasn’t found the same success in a relationship. Recently he’s started dating a long-time friend, Eve. He attempts to distance himself emotionally from Sophia but that’s difficult now that she’s in close proximity. The attraction is as strong as ever.

Take Me Home For Christmas is a story of love and forgiveness and redemption. I wondered how Brenda Novak would bring Sophia and Ted together after finding out bits and pieces of their history in previous books. I enjoyed how she did it and hope we get to learn a little more of the rest of their story in the next book.

Recommended for fans of the Whiskey Creek series and small town Christmas romances.

Expected publication:  Oct. 29, 2013