Karen Toller Whittenburg

I picked this one off the shelf to read & post at PBS and it ended up as a Keeper. It's also my first Whittenburg and I love her writing style. It's a minor take-off on the "Miracle on 34th Street" story: mom has raised her kids to know the difference between fantasy and reality, like there is no Santa Claus, so at the start of the book they hire the hero (who owns a security firm) to find the real Santa. Now I love stories with kids in them but if you don't steer clear of this one, but Abby and Andy, 7-year old twins, are the cutest kids I've come across in a romance novel. Of course romance readers know how this one will turn out but between the first and final chapters there's a lot of love (no sex) and humor, and generosity of spirit. I think I'm going to keep this one for a while; whether it ever gets set up as a yearly holiday reread is an unknown at this time, but the book is populated with warm, caring people: the mom who loves her kids but wants them to never crash to earth when reality strikes, the kids who are yearning for something their peers have and Santa is just another word of "a dad", and the hero who was commitment-phobic til he fell in love with the kids and wanted a family of his own. Lovely, lovely story.… (mehr)