The Christmas Inn

I just finished The Christmas Inn by Pamela Kelley and here are my thoughts.


Riley cannot believe she lost her job right before christmas but on returning home for the holidays, she never expected to find a second chance at love or the wonders of christmas on Cape Cod.

I love Christmas and it is never too early for me so settling in with this wonderfully heartwarming novel was just the festive kick in the pants I needed. Pamela Kelley basically writes hallmark movie novels and that is my absolute fav!!

I am not normally a fan of second chance romance but this one was perfection!! Riley has come home to help her mother at the Inn and she really finds herself while she is there. Coming up with new ideas to bring new customers in. Riley is so easy to connect to and I love that in an MC.

This is the perfect book to start your holiday season. It has all the cutesy love and the multigenerational family ties... SIGHHH I love it. It's well written, charming and the road isn't paved perfectly which I really appreciated from this book because as we all know, life isn't smooth sailing!

4 stars

Get yourself a copy today. Thank you to @stmartinspress for my gifted copy.

If Bobby Flay and Candace Cameron Bure Had A Baby. Particularly a "baby" in the business sense (aka, a company ;) ), this is probably what it would look like. Fans of both the Hallmark Channel and the Food Network are going to love this, as the plot itself *is* very stereotypically Hallmarkie (and, given that their Christmas movies in particular seem to be looked forward to all year by *millions*... perhaps this isn't a bad thing) and yet the level of detail Kelley goes into when describing the food... well, I daresay Gordon Ramsey himself would have a challenge trying to make words on paper sound so utterly delectable.

Now, if this isn't your scene... eh, maybe you like the women's fiction and/ or romance elements here and don't care so much about the foodie side or the Hallmarkie side. In which case, you're still going to enjoy this book. But if you're looking for Michael Bay action where there are explosions just because the "camera" turned... yeah, this isn't that. If you're looking for a Jeremy Robinson style balls to the wall scifi action... yeah, this isn't that either. But for what it *is*, it is done quite well - well enough that if Kelley can get this into enough hands, she's going to have quite the success on her hands.

Very much recommended.