Holiday Countdown Series: Book 1
Publication Date: December 23, 2022
Welcome to Winterwood… a small town with more heart than people!
When Grace is told it’s unlikely Granny will live to see another Christmas, she comes up with a unique plan to transform her home into a festive inn for the holidays, offering an authentic, old-fashioned Christmas experience to her guests. To make her plan a reality, Grace must convince her small-town community to get on board and help her bring her vision to life. Along the way, she meets a diverse group of people who all have their own issues and struggles, but they come together at the inn to celebrate the holiday season and find hope and joy in the midst of their challenges.
If you love, small-town, holiday romances, you’ll love Countdown to Christmas. A story about love, family traditions, and memories that last a lifetime.
Countdown to Christmas by Dianna Houx is a feel-good holiday romance that takes twenty days to count down and is filled with Christmas cheer and several activities that fill the small town of Winterwood in the Midwest with holiday spirit and goodwill.
This Christmas may be Grace’s grandmother’s last, so Grace decides to make this a wonderful Christmas for her grandmother, whom she lives with and is her caretaker. Grace isn’t prepared for how it takes off with the help of everyone in town—from the mayor to business owners, school staff, and even members of the football team.
The town and small businesses will benefit from all her ideas that others help her implement, and there’s a heartwarming feeling throughout. There are some bumps in the road and a lot of hard work by everyone involved, but Grace’s guests become like family, and many pitch in to help wherever needed. The memories she hopes to recreate for her grandmother may not be what her grandmother and her family experienced, but it’s the thought that counts. Her grandmother has her own secrets, and things may go off-kilter.
I loved getting to know Grace and some of the others. Grace was always at the forefront but never gave herself credit, no matter how much it was deserved. There were so many ways that she was enriching not only her guest’s lives but also her grandmother’s and her own, as well as those who lived in town.
Grace made friends—something she always found hard to do—and let people who cared help her. The descriptions of the old-fashioned activities, their home, the abandoned dogs, their antics, and the small businesses made me feel like I was there. I could taste the food and feel the cold. I enjoyed the countdown to Christmas and all that unfolded, but it was sometimes choppy.
There was romance in the air for a few characters, adding another layer to the story. As we wind closer to Christmas and seeing dreams come true, the characters are able to add new traditions to those that were established. Many stories are woven together, along with secrets and surprises. There was some closure with the epilogue and hints of what could come in future books. But the book did end abruptly. I turned the page, and there was the Afterword, which was totally unexpected. This is the first book in the Holiday Countdown Series, and I can’t wait for more and to see what Grace and the others get up to next with their old-fashioned holiday experience packages at her pop-up inn.
Sit back in front of the crackling fire with a cup of something hot and snuggle in as you Countdown to Christmas and participate in so many wonderful old-fashioned Christmas experiences!
Dianna Houx is a wife, mother, reader, writer, and small-town girl at heart. She resides in a rural Missouri town of less than twenty-five hundred people with her husband and three boys in a late 1800s home they’ve been lovingly restoring when she isn’t busy working on her next book.
A romantic at heart, she believes in happily-ever-afters rooted in realism and, most importantly, humor!
She is the author of Forsaking the Dark, a paranormal romance, The Queen’s Revenge, a historical romance, and the Holiday Countdown Series, a sweet, small-town romance series.
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