Home For Christmas by Melissa McClone is book #2 in the Copper Mountain Christmas series. I am a warm weather girl and have been for all of my adult life. My blood is probably as thin as water. But Melissa McClone and the Bar V5 ranch in Marietta, Montana make me yearn for snow and horses and cattle and those oh so handsome Montana Cowboys. Rachel Murphy and her brother Ty lost their parents when Rachel was just a little girl. So Ty raised her. Rachel is twenty-six now but Ty still sees her as his little sister. And he is every bit as over protective as he ever was. He put Rachel through Culinary School and she was about to reach her dream of owning her own bakery in Arizona. But she trusted the wrong business partners. Fellow chefs and she thought friends and business partners took her for everything. So she is trying to start over. She is going to spend Christmas this year with her brother Ty at the BarV5 where he is Ranch Foreman. It will be their first white Christmas together. She was not at all prepared, though, for the Ranch owner and Ty’s business partner, Nate. Nate was a Venture Capitalist and has more degrees than he can count. He thought his future was all planned out until his Dad got sick and Nate had to move to Montana to take over the family Ranch. He fell in love with it, though, and now can’t ever imagine doing anything else. The thing that is missing is having someone to share it with. “Somewhere in the state of Montana there had to be a woman he wanted to date more than once. Hell, he might propose on the second date if things ever got that far. All he had to do was find her.”The day he got home to find a beautiful woman baking in his industrial sized kitchen, filling his home with all kinds of wonderful smells, his life changed forever. Nate used his financial know how and helped Rachel to market her beautiful gingerbread houses in Marietta to help her earn enough money to start a new business. But the more time they spent together, the more Nate knew he didn’t want Rachel to go back to Arizona to start her bakery. He wanted her right here in Marietta, with him. No one wants to see you leave. Their stomachs will miss you. I’ll miss you.” Rachel has trouble trusting now, though. After a long string of horrible boyfriends and then what happened with her bakery in Arizona, how could she ever trust anyone again? But after a couple of oh so sexy kisses under the mistletoe, it might be time to admit that Nate has found his way into her heart. Nate, with his past in finance, is hilarious with how he approaches things. He thinks everything is a presentation. But the way he finally chose to show Rachel how he really felt was I think the sweetest thing I have ever seen. “Aw, bloody hell. Please tell me you’re not making her a PowerPoint presentation.”I have probably said it before but I love Melissa McClone’s books. They are just so visually wonderful. I can feel the cold air in my lungs, picture the huge Christmas tree in the ranch house, see the horses in the pastures. I loved Rachel and Nate’s story. They both have struggled in their lives but they found hope in each other for the future they both dreamed of. This was a perfect Christmas book. It left me with that special warm and fuzzy feeling that I love. “Home, there’s no place else I’d rather be. For Christmas, Forever.”
Since childhood Rachel Murphy has dreamed of owning her own bakery. Just weeks prior to seeing her dreams become a reality she discovers that she trusted the wrong people, and now she not only has no bakery, but also no money and no job. She decides to spend Christmas with her brother in Montana in order to clear her head, and plan her next move. If she can make a little money on the side making gingerbread, all the better.Nate Vaughn always knew that eventually he would inherit the Bar V5 ranch one day, but he never anticipated rescuing the ranch from the bad decisions his father made while his health was declining. Thanks to the quick thinking of his foreman, Ty, and his marketing ingenuity he was able to keep the ranch in one piece. Now Ty's sister is staying with him for Christmas and if there is one thing Nate knows, it's that if he wants to keep Ty around he needs find a way to ensure Rachel's happiness. But can Rachel's happiness and his coincide?I really love Christmas stories! As a teenager my mother would buy the Silhouette Annual Christmas Anthologies at Kmart and I would make a game of trying to steal them before she got a chance to read them. Now, with the invention of digital books, novellas can be bought and enjoyed individually.This was a sweet little story that really spoke of family, friendship, and a town coming together in the spirit of the holidays. I loved how Nate really was worried about Ty and was conflicted between his feelings for Rachel, his friendship with Ty, and the fact that Ty truly was irreplaceable business-wise.This is also a continuation of the Marietta, Montana story lines created in the Copper Mountain Rodeo Series. Many of the characters step in for a visit, and some new characters pop-up who will play parts in later stories.Overall, this is a great holiday read and will make you really want to throw your inhibitions to the wind and make a killer gingerbread house.
What do You think about Home For Christmas (2013)?
Home for Christmas by Melissa McCloneHome For Christmas by Melissa McClone is a wonderful addition to the Copper Mountain series of books. Set at Christmas-time Rachel Murphy arrives in Merietta, Montana to spend Christmas with her brother Ty who is foreman at the BarV5 dude ranch. Rachel is trying to come to terms after being taken advantage of and losing her Pheonix bakery to so-called friends.(Ty would like for Rachel to settle in Montana instead of going back to Pheonix after Christmas). Ty takes Rachel to the BarV5 dude ranch and shows her the commercially set up kitchen, Rachel realizes it would be the perfect set-up for making her gingerbread houses. With making and selling these gingerbread housesRachel hopes to earn enough money for starting over. Enter Nate Vaughn owner of the dude ranch. Nate was a venture capitalist who has come home to take over the dude ranch. When Rachel and Nate meet, Nate is instantly attracted to Rachel and Rachel doesn't mind checking Nate out either. Nate does whatever he can do to keep Rachel in Merietta. This is a wonderful romance that reminds me of romance books I've read years ago. Another great book in the Copper Mountain series. Did not disappoint me and I'm looking forward to more books in this series.I received an ARC for an honest review.
—Cindy Hamilton
Rating 3.5 starsI always enjoy sweet Christmas stories during the holidays and start reading them in early October. This is a sweet love story, but a bit too vanilla for me. The beginning started out exceedingly well and drew me in, but then I grew slightly frustrated with Rachel and Nate. I had a difficult time because both of them had a very hard time making up their minds. Rachel comes to Montana to visit her brother, Ty and to lick her wounds. Her dreams of owning her own bakery are shattered, because a shady couple took advantage of her trusting nature and swindle her out of the money she had put down on a lease for one in Arizona. (By the way, Ty treats her as if she is still a teenager, instead of a twenty-six year old woman, and she lets him get away with it. I understand he has raised her since the death of their parents, but even parents, let their children spread their wings by the time they are twenty-six!) Nate Vaughn finds Rachel in his kitchen and thinks Christmas has come early. He’s been good this year and deserves the hot gingerbread baking and the even hotter woman who is preparing it. He is immediately attracted to the cute, messy-haired blonde. When he discovers Rachel is Ty’s sister, he realizes he should have known it’s too good to be true. His foreman is very protective of his sister, and Nate knows that he needs to keep his hands off the beautiful woman, no matter how attracted he is. That starts what I thought would be an interesting story line. The premise for this story is excellent. However, I like a bit more depth to the characters, and I do not feel that I was ever in their heads, so to speak. While I understand it is a sweet contemporary romance, that makes it even more important to have strong sexual tension. The chemistry between Rachel and Nate was not as strong as I would like it to be. When I read, I want to become engaged. I want to feel what the characters are feeling, see what they are seeing. That did not happen in the second half of the book for me.Nevertheless, the book is well-written, and the pacing is good. I read the story in a few hours. I am also glad Rachel and Nate found their “Happily Ever After”. I read some of the reviews from other readers, and I am in the minority in my opinion of the story. The book has quite a few 4 and 5 star ratings. I can understand why there are so many great reviews. It is a very heart-warming story with a fulfilling HEA at the end. If you are looking for a sweet love story with a happy ending, then this may be a book you will want to read. There is a great scene with mistletoe that I quite enjoyed. Happy reading!
—Vikki Vaught
I loved Nate and Rachel's story; it is as warm and wonderful as the other books and stories in the series. As a series fan, I love the characters sprinkled through the books almost as much as the main characters and only part of that is because I have read later books in there series before I read this one. I have loved Nate and Rachel since I discovered by first Cooper Mountain V5 book.Having been burned in business by supposed friends, Rachel doesn't trust Nate's offers of help in making her sales of gingerbread houses successful; he doesn't think it is a good idea to tell her that he wants her to stay in Montana so her brother Ty will stay on the ranch. Soon, he is fighting his great attraction to her for the same reason; he is sure that Ty will killing him and then leave the ranch is Nate messes with Ty's little sister.
—Jeanie Jackson
