Home for Christmas by Stephanie Wilson
Home for Christmas
Synopsis:
Savannah Wentworth, a Seattle socialite, has sold everything she owns to balance the accounts of her family's historic business, including her ancestral home. She finds herself at a crossroads with Christmas just around the corner.
Austin Douglass, a self-made technology mogul, is getting ready to offer an IPO for his company that is gaining worldwide attention. He needs to attract investors, and the old-monied Seattle families are interested. Growing up on a wheat farm in Eastern Washington has little prepared him for the rigors of entertaining the Seattle elite. Through his P.R. person, he meets someone who is.
Savannah is a traditionalist, Austin is a minimalist. They are polar opposites. She is losing her family estate, he is gaining one. As the holidays brighten up the city and snow falls in the mountains around them; as the time-honored Christmas traditions are celebrated; can these two find a path that will lead them ... Home for Christmas?
Review:
Home for Christmas was a fun holiday read. It has all that Christmas magic that I love so much. Nothing like the holidays to get two people to come together and fall in love. Love it.
Savannah is a little down on her luck. She has had to sell of most of her family's belongings and her family's business and now she has about a month before she needs to decide what she is going to do. She does not have a lot of money left, she has to move out of the family's house that she loves so much, and she has to decide on one of two not so exciting job offers. She is really in a bind and she doesn't have many people she can count on. She doesn't have any family, but does have an awesome best friend.
Austin is the owner of a tech company he built and unbeknownst to Savannah when they first meet, the buyer of her family home. He has never really had a strong connection to anyone or anyplace. He grew up on a farm in Eastern Washington, but it wasn't a warm fuzzy home he lived in. He has never really gotten close to anyone since.
Savannah is so sad to lose the house. She is very attached to her family's possessions and she hates that she is losing all of them. When Austin needs someone to make her childhood house into a home again in very little time, Savannah is offered the job. She loves doing things like this and she is from old money like the investors Austin is trying to woo. She knows what they will be looking for in an investment. She is cautious, but happy to have one last Christmas in her old home, one last time decorating and hosting parties in her old house. Since she is so attached to the house she gets a little annoyed with Austin at times since he doesn't really care about the house like she does. He wasn't even planning on living there, just using it to host parties and such to try and get investors. They can rub each other the wrong way at times, but they still are attracted to each other. Neither of them really wants a relationship, but this is Christmastime so they cannot help it!
There are some misconceptions on both sides that hinder the magic from bringing them together as quickly as it could. Savannah inadvertently hurts Austin, but then does nothing to fix the situation. She would just need to explain that this is not really the way it is and they could be living happily ever after. On Savannah's part she is kind of stupid and listens to the mean girls who obviously are jealous of her and just making stuff up. I don't know why she never talked to Austin about the things she thought she knew, but in the end it all works out.
The one thing that kind of annoyed me in this book? All the references to places in Seattle that were not really needed. They read kind of like product placement, but to show that the author really does know the city. I just don't like when places and references are thrown in just to show the book is really set wherever it is. It is fine if the characters go places or reference things to set the location, but it has to feel like it fits into the story, not that it is like a product placement in a movie. So that brought my rating down a bit. It wasn't terrible, but it did bug me a little bit. Overall though it was a good read.
Rating: ★ ★ ★1/2
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