Normally in anthologies like these, the best story is reserved for last—presumably to end on a delicious, cozy note. Considering Elizabeth Rolls' and Deborah Hale's offerings brimmed over with warmth and generosity, Christmas spirit and tenderness and love, I was sure I was in for a treat with that last story.

Alas, Mistletoe Kisses broke with tradition. Diane Gaston's tale was almost exclusively tell with no show, and given all the secrets and self-pity and distrust between the hero and heroine, I felt more Christmas spirit, tenderness, and love between the heroine and her pregnant ex-student, the hero and his long-dead brother and father and uncle, and the pregnant ex-student and her supposedly dead fiancé.

The rating for this book is entirely due to Elizabeth Rolls' and Deborah Hale's novellas, and while I would advise any new readers to avoid Diane Gaston's story altogether, if you must read it, make sure you read it first and save the other two for last. ( )

3 regency Christmas stories. In A Soldier's Tale, Dominic returns injured from the war, with his family wanting him to marry an heiress. But a distant penniless cousin, who always befriended him and saw into his soul is now grown up. In A Winter's Tale, widowed Christable & her son doesn't expect much, but from a tip-off of a friend, her jilted ex-boyfriend looks in on them, and sweeps the ill Christabel off her feet and into his home. In A Twelfth Night, Elizabeth and her pregnant ward Anne are turned away from shelter in the main house, only to have Anne give birth in the stable. Once Zach comes to his drunken senses, he remembers Elizabeth from long ago, and set to have her, Anne and the new babe stay in his home and life forever. ( )