Hi everyone, how was your weekend? Have you been bagging yourself some bargains in the Black Friday sales? There wasn’t anything I particularly needed but I have enjoyed some of the reductions applied across the board like 20% off all TU Clothing at Sainsbury’s, 30% (or 3 for 2 instore) at Paperchase and 20% off Accessorise. When you want to get some Christmas gifts or need to stock up on some office supplies, those discounts to everything are most welcome.
Anyway, I have some discounts on my books to bring to you.
Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes is on a 99p Kindle deal for TODAY ONLY (Monday 28th November). This is part of a Black Friday Goldbox so there’ll be lots of other great offers on other books running alongside it.
You can get it here. To find out more, the blurb is at the bottom of this post.
Staying with the Christmas titles, Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop is in Audible UK’s Cyber Monday sale which starts today and ends tomorrow. They’re offering it for the bargain price of £1.99 across these two days.
You can find it on Audible UK here. The blurb is also at the end of this post.
If you’re not an Audible subscriber already and are thinking of giving it a try, now’s a great time to do so as they’re currently offering the first 4 months at a 60% reduction. Bargain! It’s one of those auto renewals so do watch out for that if you only want to participate in the trial.
You can also find Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop for 99p on Kindle UK at the moment – find it here – and it’s in the Kindle Australia monthly deal, ending on Wednesday. You can find it in Australia for only $1.29 here.
And a reminder that the first and final books in the Hedgehog Hollow series – Finding Love at Hedgehog Hollow and Christmas Miracles at Hedgehog Hollow are free in Prime Reading at the moment and also 99p for Kindle so there are several great offers available.
And if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, ALL my books are FREE on KU. Woo hoo!
Big hugs and happy reading/listening Jessica xx
CHRISTMAS AT CARLY’S CUPCAKES:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
It’s December on Castle Street; the fairy lights are twinkling, snow has settled and the festive season is in full swing.
For Carly, the owner of Carly’s Cupcakes, it’s the busiest time of year getting everyone’s Christmas treats ready on time. However with her clumsy sister, Bethany, as a co-worker, it’s proving a difficult task. They say you shouldn’t mix work with family. Maybe they have a point…
As Christmas approaches, Carly is also eagerly awaiting the return of her best friend to Whitsborough Bay. Liam has no idea he’s been the object of her affection since their schooldays. After years of pining after him, can Carly pluck up the courage to finally tell him how she really feels by 25th December?
Could a little festive magic make all of Carly’s wishes come true this Christmas…?
A heartwarming, short festive story of friendship and family from bestseller Jessica Redland. You can find out what happens to Carly next through exploring her best friend Tara’s story in Starry Skies Over The Chocolate Pot Café.
CHRISTMAS WISHES AT THE CHOCOLATE SHOP:
Sometimes you just need a little Christmas magic to make your wishes come true…
When master chocolatier, Charlee, takes the leap to move to the picturesque seaside town of Whitsborough Bay, she is determined to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and set up a chocolate shop.
Luckily, she finds the perfect location for Charlee’s Chocolates on beautiful Castle Street… Now she just has to refurbish it in time for Christmas!
With a useless boyfriend and countless DIY disasters, Charlee doesn’t know if she’ll make it in time. With no ‘traditional’ family to support her, she feels lost in her new surroundings and the secrets of the past are weighing her down.
But the warmth and festive spirit of the Whitsborough Bay community will surprise her, and when plumber, Matt, comes to the rescue, it might be that all of Charlee’s dreams could come true this Christmas, and she could learn what family really means…
Escape to Castle Street for the perfect uplifting, festive read from top 10 bestseller Jessica Redland.
It’s two weeks today until Christmas Day! Eek! I am unbelievably disorganised this year. I had an unusually busy diary in November and an editing deadline and it has completely knocked everything out for me. The trees are up but there are still boxes everywhere still which need clearing today. I’ve had a couple of fairly unsuccessful shopping trips so still have some gifts to buy. My daughter’s birthday is 6 days before Christmas so we need double the ideas for gifts from us, both sets of grandparents, my brothers and my husband’s sisters. I met up with my side of the family last weekend and was organised enough to take their Christmas cards with me but I haven’t written any others. I think it’s going to need to be a busy Christmassy catching-up weekend for me.
Speaking of Christmas, there are some fabulous deals on my four festive books right now. Three of these books are in a series although each works as a standalone book:
Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop (formerly Charlee and the Chocolate Shop)
Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes
Starry Skies Over The Chocolate Pot Café (formerly Christmas at the Chocolate Pot Café)
These are part of a series called ‘Christmas on Castle Street’ but it’s really only a series connected by the fact that they’re all set at Christmas in businesses on Castle Street. However, this is the order they’re written in and the businesses and characters get mentioned in subsequent books so there are some small spoilers if you read books 2 and 3 out of order but nothing much if you read book 1 out of order.
My latest release – Snowflakes Over The Starfish Café – is the start of a brand new series but is a complete story with no cliffhangers. It mentions Christmas and it has chapters set on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but this is more of a seasonal book than a Christmas one and has a very different feel to the other two.
In the UK, these books are on various deals which should keep them all at 99p throughout December. They are this price on Kindle and Apple Books and three of them are 99p on Kobo but Starry Skies is £2.99 on Kobo at the time of writing this.
In the USA, there are offers on three of the four reads on Kindle. At the time of writing this, Starry Skies was $3.99 but prices do sometimes change as Amazon price matches. Apple Books currently has different deals. Starry Skies and Christmas Wishes are both $0.99, with the Starfish Café and Carly’s Cupcakes at $1.99.
In Canada, there are some fabulous Kindle offers on all four books. The current Apple Books offers are the same as shown below for three of them. The only exception is that Starfish Café is currently $1.99 on Apple.
And finally to Australia, there are also great deals to be had. All four of these books are currently $1.99 on Apple Books Australia.
So loads of amazing deals to be had in all these territories although do bear in mind that prices can change, particularly on Amazon as they frequently price-match other sites.
Happy festive reading!
If you’ve already read these but have friends/family members/colleagues/neighbours who you think will enjoy them, please do spread the word!
Right, best get into Christmas mode and try to get organised!
An enormous THANK YOU to Rachel Gilbey from Rachel’s Random Resources for organising the tour and to all the amazing reviewers/bloggers who took part, generously giving their time to read the story, compose their review, and share it on the socials.
I’m delighted to report that this was another really positive tour. Yay!
There were a couple of no-postings and I hope those reviewers are doing okay as I noticed they haven’t posted anything for a little while. Sending hugs if they’re poorly or having a difficult time just now. There was also a promotion post only post which meant 45 reviews were shared.
Not everyone gives a rating on their posts, but I do manage to track some down when the review is also shared on Amazon around the same time. The 35 ratings shared (or sleuthed by me) were all positive with 22 x 5-star, 3 x 4.5-star, and 10 x 4-star. It’s such a thrill when every single rating is a positive one.
It was a delight to read reviews from those who’ve read several or even all of my books, noting how much they loved being back on Castle Street and among friends. For those who were new to my work, there were several comments about checking out past and/or future books which is fabulous.
There were a couple of reviewers who had read this book in its original incarnation of Charlee and the Chocolate Shop and I was delighted to read that they loved the revised (and expanded) version even more.
Some reviews were so lovely that they made me quite tearful. It’s such an honour to have such prolific readers say so many wonderful things about my writing and my abilities as an author. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I do firmly believe that recommendations are the best way for an author to succeed so I appreciate every single one of these kind reviews. You are all superstars.
I have a confession to make. I may have written three Christmas novels and also covered the Christmas period in other stories but, until I became a published author, I’d only ever read one Christmas book! It may seem odd that I’ve therefore written several Christmas books but the reason I hadn’t read many was that, sadly, my first Christmas read was disappointing.
I remember browsing Waterstones about ten years ago and there was this table covered in Christmas reads. They looked so irresistible with their reds and greens and snowy covers and I selected one by an author whose name I recognised although I’d never read anything by her. I started to read it but it didn’t quite capture my interest and I didn’t get very far. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps I didn’t have enough time to get into it with so much going on in the run-up to Christmas. So I decided to try again the following year.
The following year, it didn’t fare much better. It took the third year before I got through it but it was a struggle. I’m not going to name the author or book as that would be unfair but instead of being the uplifting read I was promised, it was quite depressing and it put me off.
But a few years later, a friend of mine – Jo Bartlett – wrote A Holly Bay Christmas and my faith in Christmas books was restored. I think I’d just picked badly with my first Christmas read. Jo’s story is gorgeous and uplifting and simply fabulous and she’s written several Christmas books since then, all of which are lovely and highly recommended: The Gift of Christmas Yet To Come, Hope’s Cornish Christmas, A Song for St Nicholas and The Christmas Shop at Central Park. On my reading plans for this week is her latest release, The Last Christmas Kiss. You can find Jo Bartlett’s Amazon author page here.
Inspired by Jo’s first Christmassy read, I wrote my first Christmas book: Charlee and the Chocolate Shop. You can buy it here now but followers of my work will know that all of my back catalogue has been re-edited and re-issued by my amazing publishers, Boldwood Books, and Charlee’s story will be the final one to get the Boldwood polish and will be re-released in August 2021 so you might want to wait until then for a fresh version.
That year, I also wrote a book called Callie’s Christmas Wish which was a sequel to a novella called Raving About Rhys. Both stories have been seamlessly combined to make one full-length novel – Making Wishes at Bay View – which is the first book in the ‘Welcome to Whisborough Bay’ series. It spans roughly a year but there is quite a bit of action around Christmas and New Year so, while not strictly a Christmas book, it will give the Christmas feels.
The following year, I wrote Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes (Kindle link here) and Christmas at The Chocolate Pot Café which have both been freshly edited and re-released this year through Boldwood, the latter under the new title of Starry Skies Over the Chocolate Pot Café (Kindle link here).
I’m really looking forward to diving into some Christmas books across the rest of December, including a few from fellow Boldwood authors but I thought I’d share a review of some of the Christmas releases from this year that I’ve already loved…
SHARON BOOTH
Sharon is a really good friend of mine and I’ve read and loved every single one of her books. She writes beautiful stories of ‘love, laughter and happy ever after’ set in Yorkshire and there are several Christmas ones: Christmas at the Country Practice, Merry Christmas Bramblewick and Christmas at Cuckoo Nest Cottage are the 2nd, 4th and 6th books respectively in her gorgeous six-strong Bramblewick series. Each is a standalone story featuring a different main character but the whole series is fabulous so I’d recommend reading them all!
Saving Mr Scrooge is a full-length novel and a nod to the Dickens classic, as you can probably guess from the title. It’s the start of a Moorland Heroes series but each book is standalone.
Belle, Book and Christmas Candle is the brilliant start to the Castle Clair trilogy and set over Christmas. You’ll definitely want to read the whole series. It’s great fun!
But the book I’m going to focus on here is Sharon’s 2020 release: Christmas With Cary. My review is below. This is the third in a series called ‘Home for Christmas’ but all three books are only connected by the theme of being home for Christmas. There are no recurring characters or settings so they can be read completely out of order without any spoilers. Baxter’s Christmas Wish and The Other Side of Christmas are the first two books and both are wonderful.
Christmas With Cary
Having read (and loved) every single one of Sharon’s books, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of this on my Kindle and was hooked from the first page. I was instantly on Molly’s side, rooting for her to make some pretty enormous decisions about her future … and her past.
I could feel her trepidation as she moved into her holiday cottage facing Christmas alone and was delighted as she overcame each hurdle and started to find herself again.
I’m not giving anything away when I say this is about seeking a second chance with Cary – the one who got away – and, over the course of the book, we find out more about Cary and Molly’s past and why they didn’t quite make it. This is beautifully fed into the present-day storyline and is really easy to follow.
Cary is named after the movie star of old, Cary Grant, and I wondered if my lack of familiarity with him or his films might hinder my enjoyment or understanding of the story but it absolutely didn’t. The chapters are all named after films and very cleverly linked but you absolutely don’t need to know the films to follow this touch of brilliance. On an aside, I may now need to seek me out some Cary Grant films as he sounds divine!
Back to the book, though, it really is a delight. It’s such a beautiful and moving story and I did have tears in my eyes at several points, hoping that Molly would finally get the Christmas she deserved. As to whether she does, you’ll have to read it to find out but I would definitely encourage to you to read it. It’s an absolutely gorgeous warm hug of a book.
You can visit Sharon Booth’s Amazon author page here and specifically purchase Christmas With Cary here.
SAMANTHA TONGE
Sam writes lovely heartwarming stories and I’ve read and loved several of them. I’m hoping to read Sam’s Christmas release from last year – The Christmas Calendar Girls – this month as I didn’t quite manage to squeeze it in last year. Her 2020 release is The Winter We Met.
The Winter We Met
This is the story of Jess Jagger, toy shop manager, who sits in the wrong seat when flying back from a toy show – a move which brings Nik into her life. Nik’s family run a toy manufacturing company from Australia but it’s struggling and he’s on a research trip to see what’s new and popular in toy stores around Europe with the hope of injecting some new ideas into the business. Jess invites him to visit Under the Tree – the shop she manages – and they soon become firm friends.
Jess’s flatmate, Oliver, doesn’t seem too enamoured by Jess’s new friendship and is convinced that Nik isn’t the person he claims to be, especially when befriends the residents of the care home where Jess’s gran lives. Oliver becomes even more suspicious when Nik gets involved in a plan to throw a last Christmas party before the care home closes – shock news for everyone and awful timing – and the residents are separated into new homes.
I have a real fondness for intergenerational stories when the elderly characters are conveyed in a non-stereotypical way and Samantha Tonge handles this beautifully with some really interesting personalities. I love the friendships that are painted between the residents and how devastated they are at the news of Willow Court’s closure, and also the friendships with the staff and the families of the residents.
My favourite moment involves pebbles. I won’t say any more than that. I thought it was beautiful and poignant. I also loved the way the community pulled together to give the residents a memorable final Christmas party.
As for whether Oliver is right to be suspicious about Nik, you’ll just have to read The Winter We Met to find out for yourself!
This is a heart-warming story filled with lovely sentiments about what the spirit of Christmas is and the importance of family and friendships. Awww.
Victoria writes lovely heartwarming stories and started a series set in the Scottish Highlands last year. I haven’t read the first two but I read Hopeful Hearts at Glendale Hall this year which is the third book in the series. I’m going to go back and read the previous two as I loved the setting and Victoria’s writing.
Hopeful Hearts at Glendale Hall
A gorgeous feel-good story about embracing the unexpected and finding your place in life. With a stunning setting and fabulous cast of characters, I’m already looking forward to the next one.
There are two books in the series before this one which I hadn’t already read but there was enough back story in Hopeful Hearts at Glendale Hall for me to follow what had happened in those. This book therefore can definitely be picked up now and thoroughly enjoyed. I’d now like to go back and read the other two as my interest has definitely been piqued and, of course, a return to the stunning Scottish Highlands would be lovely.
Jessica Redland Author 