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My Take in Brief: If you hate the First Amendment, you will love this book!

Acquisition note: This is a Harlequin that just came out. I got it on the $.50 charity table at my market. Woohoo! Excerpt here.

Heroine and Hero: Rural Snow Mountain, Washington cop Brody Taggert is dealing with the death of his brother 6 years ago and the impending loss of his dog to cancer.  He doesn’t like Christmas and is in no mood for love. Lila Grainger, a.k.a. Miss L. Toe, moved to Snow Mountain to open a Christmas shop and get away from memories of a stalker. She’s more in the mood for love.

Plot: Snow Mountain’s town council has decided not to fund their annual Christmas display on Main Street in favor of buying a police cruiser. Lila decides to spearhead the effort to “Save Christmas in Snow Mountain.” Lila, the niece of Brody’s boss, and Brody are attracted to each other right away, but Brody fights it.

Distinctive feature: Longest synonym for fart ever in a Harlequin: “a sound like air being released from a balloon.”

The Racy Romance Review: I was joking about the First Amendment, although I did find it highly amusing that I was reading this book the same week Washington was in the news because the governor allowed some atheists to put up a sign near the Christmas displays in the capitol.  Then some mayhem ensued, prompting the Democrat governor and Republican AG to issue the following statement:

The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistent and clear that, under the Constitution’s First Amendment, once government admits one religious display or viewpoint onto public property, it may not discriminate against the content of other displays, including the viewpoints of nonbelievers.

Snow Mountain has no other viewpoints to accommodate, apparently, but that wasn’t my beef. No, the issue I had was why the seemingly reasonable decision of the town council to buy a much needed police cruiser rather than pay for an elaborate holiday display came under fire from a heroine who had only lived in Snow Mountain for a few days.  But I digress…

This was a very nice and surprisingly touching read.  I think of it as kind of like the Gift of the Magi. Short and kind of heartbreaking, actually. I am very impressed with how moving the story of Brody’s loss and his recovery from grief turned out to be.

The book is mainly about the very sweet development of Brody and Lila’s relationship (surprise!!). Brody’s critical view of Christmas (people still get drunk, they fight, they steal) clashes with Lila’s rosy one (really a cover for unresolved issues in her past) and they both turn out to be wrong. The cover copy tells us that these two get stuck in the snow, and they do, but it’s more of an interlude than a lengthy stranding. And, despite sharing a bed, they only kiss (is that typical for this line?) in this quite conservative book.

The blurb also suggests that Lila is one of those bubbly types, and she was an energetic community organizer, but I felt she was not particularly intriguing. Her recent history as a victim of harassment, while well done, was more interesting to me for the way it gave Brody a chance to display his keen cop awareness and his protective feelings.

Of course, there are some of the usual Christmas clichés (Christmas is not about things). But I felt the author managed to get into some pretty deep waters about fear, love, and loss in this scant 182 pages.

For example, Lila is experiencing writers block trying to write a book about Christmas (in an underdeveloped subplot), and by the end of the book she knows why. It’s pretty mushy, but I’m in the mood for mush this week:

Suddenly Lila Grainger knew exactly how to have a perfect Christmas. You found someone who needed your love and your gifts and you gave them.

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