Title: Falling Like Snowflakes
Author: Denise Hunter
Series: Summer Harbor, Book 1
Print Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Audio Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Narrator: Julie Lyles Carr
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Christian fiction
Published: September 2015
Length: 7 hrs, 42 minutes, Unabridged

Anyone ready for some Christmas themed reading? I just finished reading a novel that takes place during the Christmas season on a Christmas tree farm. And it’s so good, I’d recommend you read it now. Or, really, any time of year.

Book Description (from the publisher’s site):

Eden Martelli is too busy fleeing the clutches of danger to realize she’s running straight into the arms of a new love.

Speeding north through rural Maine, Eden Martelli wonders how her life came to this—on the run with her mute five-year-old son dozing fitfully in the passenger seat. When a breakdown leaves them stranded in Summer Harbor, Eden has no choice but to stay put through Christmas . . . even though they have no place to lay their heads.

Beau Callahan is a habitual problem solver—for other people anyway. He left the sheriff’s department to take over his family’s Christmas tree farm, but he’s still haunted by the loss of his parents and struggling to handle his first Christmas alone.

When Eden shows up looking for work just as Beau’s feisty aunt gets out of the hospital, Beau thinks he’s finally caught a break. Eden is competent and dedicated—if a little guarded—and a knockout to boot. But, as he soon finds out, she also comes with a boatload of secrets.

Eden has been through too much to trust her heart to another man, but Beau is impossible to resist, and the feeling seems to be mutual. As Christmas Eve approaches, Eden’s past catches up to her.

Beau will go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe. But who’s going to protect his heart from a woman who can’t seem to trust again?

My Thoughts:

Falling Like Snowflakes is a sweet contemporary romance with substance. Some of its best features are the loveable characters, the sense of community and family, and the characters’ growth and healing over the course of the story.

On top of all that, there’s a suspense thread woven in that serves to raise the stakes and makes for some page turning plot twists near the end of the book. Even so, I’d call this more romance than romantic suspense, since it’s the romance that really drives the story. Eve and Beau definitely have some great chemistry, and it’s fun watching them come to terms with that over the course of the book.

Fans of sweet contemporary romance won’t want to miss this one. And I, for one, am already on the lookout for Books 2 and 3 in the Summer Harbor series. I look forward to spending more time getting to know the Callahan family and seeing how the love stories already hinted at in this book will play out in future installments.

The audio edition of Falling Like Snowflakes is narrated by Julie Lyles Carr who does an admirable job of clearly and consistently enunciating the text. Just be aware, the reading doesn’t distinguish between character voices. It’s more a straightforward reading like you might find in a non-fiction audiobook. While I might have preferred a more elaborate and emotionally charged performance, this reading did get the job done, allowing me to “read” the book with hands and eyes free.

Thank you to Brilliance Audio for providing a copy of this audiobook for review purposes.