This is a western contemporary romance, book 1 of the Wyoming Christmas trilogy.
After his longtime girlfriend marries another man, Tom Gorman, owner of a large ranch in southeastern Wyoming, thinks there will never be a happy ending for him. To avoid people’s knowing stares and nosy questions, he rarely comes to town and then only briefly. Working on his ranch and taking care of his two siblings becomes his life. As a favor to an old friend, he invites a young widow with her two little boys to stay at his ranch.
Lottie Donovan grew up as an orphan raised in foster care, and she has been alone for most of her life. Now at thirty years of age, she is alone again after her husband Wyatt, a police officer, is killed during a bank robbery. She struggles to take care of her two boys from her income as a schoolteacher. When her house sells faster than she expected, she has no place to live. Tom Gorman offers her temporary shelter at his ranch and Lottie wants to pay him back by transforming his house into a home and making his family happy. The approaching Christmas celebration is a great opportunity to bring his family together. If only she could ignore the attraction she has felt for Tom ever since they were in high school when Tom was the high school quarterback. Lottie was secretly in love with him then, while Tom had eyes only for his beautiful girlfriend Faith Parker.
Will the magic of Christmas bring together these two lonely people who are so much in need of true love?
Vivian Sinclair always enjoyed dreaming up stories. When she had time in her busy life, she used to disappear with her laptop to write. Her family often found her in her office immersed in the world of fiction. And because a good dream should be a happy one, all her books have happy-endings. She was a pioneer of e-publishing. Her first book, a contemporary romance, was e-published in 1997 under a different pen name. She has written several other contemporary romances. In the last few years, she also started writing women’s fiction. After years of moving from the East Coast to the Midwest and then to the Pacific Northwest, after traveling all over the United States, Vivian settled in the Seattle area, where she lives with her husband and her daughter.
So glad I read this. It's not really what I'd considered your typical cowboy romance but then again it is.
The widowed single mother Lottie runs into financial difficulties and is helped by the reclusive rancher Tom. She and her two little boys make what was a undisciplined in happy house and turn it and it's residents into a warm loving family. Super sweet and cute. Great all around cowboy read.
If I could give this story more stars I would. If you love westerns then I strongly recommend this book. It's very hard to put down storyline is also good. The characters are awesome I liked them all.
Groupie, high school love. I'm sure everyone knows someone during their high school years whom they've had a crush on. Lots of these types of attraction were from afar. This love story runs the whole gamut of love morphing into a strong relationship. This author hit all the stops on the way to love. Some parts will leave you teary eyed. While others parts will have you laughing. Men and women definitely have problems when it comes to "amore," it's like women are from Mars and men are from Pluto....ENJOY
Well written and heart warming! This author astutely depicts all the happiness and foibles of life. It held my interest through the entirety of the book.
I gave one star for the plot which had interesting ancillary distractions. However it is clear the author had zero knowledge of western conversational dialogue or adult and rational and adult interpersonal relationships. So here's my advice: keep writing, use a familiar geographical area in which to place your people....the background will become a character of power in the story (you did well with this.) Next, use your own conversations as a clue to how your characters would converse in the extraordinary circumstances you've created. last thing: keep writing. You've done far more than I.
I loved Footprints in the Snow (Christmas Book 1). I think it is a well written story and because I usually read old time Westerns, I almost didn't pick this one to read. Much to my surprise, I did love it. Also the characters are very believable. Now I am on to the 2nd Wyoming Christmas Book, A Visitor for Christmas. It's Brianna's Story. I'm hoping that she will eventually fall in love with Virgil, who has almost given up with them ever being a couple!
Good plot, good story, liked the characters, but not well written. Dialogue was not believable. People in Wyoming don't speak like this (especially ranchers).