Blog Tour: I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Lori Wilde (Excerpt & Review)
Love is in the air…and Christmas is right around the corner. From New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Lori Wilde comes an exciting new installment in the Twilight Texas series:
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
Book Seven
416 Pages
Release Date: 10/27/2015
Publisher: HarperCollins | Imprint: Avon Books
Genre: Romance | Contemporary Romance
Series: Twilight Texas
Christmas in Twilight, Texas, is all merriment and mistletoe. The Cookie Club is whipping up their most festive sweets, the townspeople are scrambling to get their holiday shopping done, and Joe—a hometown guy with a restless heart—is dreaming about the woman he wants to kiss most…
…And who happens to be staying at his sister’s place over the holidays, while Joe’s sister is away. But Joe isn’t quite sure he wants to be a living Christmas present to runaway law student Gabi Preston.
Joe thinks the sassy sweetheart he nicknames “Trouble” won’t inconvenience anything but his healthy sex drive. But when he discovers the reasons Gabi escaped from her life, he aches to give her everything she’s never had. As the magic of the season draws them together, the gift of love is the only one worth giving…
I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS on Goodreads
A TWILIGHT, TEXAS series on Goodreads
From I’ll Be Home For Christmas by Lori Wilde:
He thought of the cake woman again and grunted. He did miss his footloose lifestyle that would have allowed him the time to sidle up to her, flirt, and potentially start up a torrid affair. A muscle in his cheek twitched. Joe scratched his face.
Concentrate.
All he had to do was keep his focus on the farm and off enticing women. Easy to say, not so easy to do when he hadn’t had sex in six months.
While he loved being at the farm, today the old antsy, gotta- get- on- the- road- again feeling was stronger than usual.
Blame his restlessness on the hot girl with the rockin’ bod. One look at her sweet pink tongue and he’d wanted to invite her to come swing in his playground. It had taken willpower not to ogle those dynamite curves enhanced by that snug-fitting sweater.
And when they’d made eye contact, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the very spirit of Christmas was sitting in the window at Perks, throwing her warmth and grace all over him.
The way she held herself, her pert comment about cake and sex, her slight knowing smile told him she was something special and damn if she didn’t make him want to shine.
But there was more to her than confident shoulders, sassy words, and Mona Lisa lips. In the depth of her soft blue eyes, he’d seen a wistfulness that hinted at deeply buried sorrow and that had given him pause.
No. It wasn’t her soft sadness that made him hesitate, or his own responsibilities. She was way too girl- next- door with her I’m- so- easy- to- get- along- with scent and thick, tawny hair. She was a white picket fences and happily- ever- after kind of woman.
And he wasn’t that guy.
Been there. Tried it. Failed like hell.
Driving down the two- lane road, thinking of her and fighting the urge to go back into the coffee shop for a second look, Joe felt a shiver slice down his spine. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. Simultaneously, a strange ache lodged in the center of his chest.
Why?
Pretty woman. Pink tongue. Perfect hair. Sexy.
Too damn long without sex. That was why. Frig, Cheek. Knock it off.
Right. He was on that. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a thousand other things to do than chase after a gorgeous hottie with soulful eyes.
A neighbor honked at him, and waved as he drove past.
Joe blinked and glanced around, belatedly realizing he’d been so caught up in thinking about the pretty woman that he’d missed the turnoff to a road he traveled every single day.
Praise for LORI WILDE
“Tempered with love, a caring community, a dash of suspense, and the romantic delight of a Twilight Christmas, this engaging story brims with strength and hope-definitely one to savor.”
— Library Journal on CHRISTMAS AT TWILIGHT
“Christmas at Twilight is a wonderful heartwarming story not to be missed. The characters are written with compassion as the love between the couple grows.”
— RT Book Reviews (4 Stars) on CHRISTMAS AT TWILIGHT
“Lori Wilde has created a rich and wonderful story about the charm of small town life combined with the power and passion of first love. Delicious!”
— Robyn Carr on A Cowboy Christmas
“A wonderful story… The ending will leave readers with the desire to make return visits to Jubilee, Texas.”
— RT Book Reviews, 4 stars, on Love at First Sight
“A pair of engaging protagonists, a wealth of wacky townsfolk, and a mystery with a dangerous twist add up to a charmingly sexy tale that will leave fans smiling.”
— Library Journal on Love at First Sight
“[T]heir personal development forms the heart and soul of the novel, a delicately revealing in-depth character study. Wilde’s clever combination of humor, sorrow and love brings a deeply appealing sense of realism.”
— Publishers Weekly on All of Me
*Print Copy provided by Publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review*
Gabi Preston has spent her entire life doing what others want as opposed to figuring out what she wants, so her entire self-image is warped and framed by a view outside her own—a view she’s determined to change. Joe Cheek has spent his life working at one trade or another, traveling from one state to another, never quite able to settle for long. On the surface, these two people should have nothing in common, but somehow, they understand each other in a way few others possibly can.
I’ll Be Home For Christmas is a beautiful, compassionate love story between a good, steadfast man who longs for roots and a brilliant, responsible good girl on a quest to find herself. Neither one of them expects to find what’s missing in each other, but they do, and though things about their relationship are somewhat complicated by exterior factors, they can’t bring themselves to stay away from each other.
I really loved this book. It’s a fantastic Christmas read about two people in need of a place to belong, and a connection that matters. This was the kind of love story you savor, between two good people who just haven’t found that lock and key inside themselves yet. They’re lost and searching for something they can’t quite name, but the town of Twilight calls to them in a host of different ways and something about each other calls to them, too.
This is my first Twilight Texas read, so I can’t comment about the series as a whole quite yet, but I do know I wasn’t lost in reading this book. It’s well-written and engaging, with a true-to-life, heartfelt love story at its core. It’s emotional, intriguing, sexy, funny, and a feel-good read that is absolutely perfect for the Christmas season.
If you’re looking for an emotionally deep romance read set in a small Texas town with two terrific lead characters and a wonderfully drawn cast of secondary characters, I’ll Be Home For Christmas is a captivating, delightful, and entertaining romance you won’t want to miss. I loved it, and can’t recommend it highly enough.
Want to know about the other books in the Twilight Texas series?
Click on the covers below to go to their Goodreads pages.
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, Lori Wilde has sold seventy-eight works of fiction to four major New York Publishing houses. She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Texas Christian University and a certificate in forensic nursing from Kaplan University. She is a member of the International Association of Forensic Nurses.
Her first NYT bestseller, the third book in her Twilight, Texas series, The First Love Cookie Club has been optioned for a television movie. The town of Granbury, Texas, upon which her fictional town of Twilight, Texas is loosely based, honors Lori with an annual Twilight, Texas weekend each Christmas. http://www.twilighttexas.com
A popular writing instructor, Lori is a two time RITA finalist and has four times been nominated for Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award. She’s won the Colorado Award of Excellence, the Wisconsin Write Touch Award, The Golden Quill, the Lories, and The More than Magic. Her books have been translated into 27 languages and excerpted in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Complete Woman, and Quick and Simple magazines. She lives in Texas with her husband, Bill, and her two New American Shepherds.
Connect with Lori Wilde
Website – http://loriwilde.com/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/loriwilde
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LoriWildeBooks/
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/38217.Lori_Wilde
Good Morning! Thank you so much for featuring I’ll be home for Christmas today and for the sweet review. ~Lori
Hi Lori! Thanks for stopping by today. I seriously loved I’ll Be Home For Christmas. I loved Joe so much, but he made me cry at the end. He’s got such a great heart. I loved him, and I loved the way he was with Gabi. Perfect holiday read!
thanks for having Lori here!!! love her books so having her here guarantees that you will have more people liking and visiting the site like me!!!
It was my pleasure! I was excited to be able to feature Lori and I’ll Be Home For Christmas today. I’ll be featuring the other books in the Twilight Texas series coming up because I’m going to work my way through them all.
I love Lori’s books. She’s a must buy for me.
I’ve read her Jubilee Texas books and loved them. I have no idea how I missed reading the Twilight books, but I’m going to be making my way through the series backlist asap.
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment!