I'm a sucker for a Christmas romance, so I bought this book when I found it at my local thrift store. But this is one that isn't going on my keeper shelf.

BRIDE AT BELLFIELD MILL started off well, but the author obviously ran out of pages. Right when things were just getting interesting, the characters suddenly decide that they're in love, which was hard for me to believe, given that the hero had delirious with fever and been at death's door for most of the book. It's pretty hard for the love to seem believeable when they barely spent any time together where the hero was conscious. I think this could have been a really memorable story, but the page restriction really hurt it.

A FAMILY FOR HAWTHORN FARM was okay, if a bit cliched. The widowed hero who had a horrible late wife who hated sex and the saint of a heroine who was working herself to the bone to provide for her orphaned younger brothers and sisters has been done before. I also never really felt like I connected with the characters, so I found I wasn't all that interested in their story.

TILLY OF TAP HOUSE was very difficult to get into. I found the author's writing style a bit awkward, where I had to read parts over a few times to grasp what was going on. There were also a lot of jarring point-of-view switches, which really inhibited the flow of the words.

There are better Christmas romance anthologies out there.