Book Review for Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

 Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

 

Publication September 26, 2023

Genre:  Christmas, Contemporary Romance

Taken from Goodreads:  When fall rolls around, it’s time for Kerry Tolliver to leave her family’s Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina for the wilds of New York City to help her gruff older brother & his dog, Queenie, sell the trees at the family stand on a corner in Greenwich Village. Sharing a tiny vintage camper and experiencing Manhattan for the first time, Kerry’s ready to try to carve out a new corner for herself.

In the weeks leading into Christmas, Kerry quickly becomes close with the charming neighbors who live near their stand. When an elderly neighbor goes missing, Kerry will need to combine her country know-how with her newly acquired New York knowledge to protect the new friends she’s come to think of as family,

And complicating everything is Patrick, a single dad raising his adorable, dragon-loving son Austin on this quirky block. Kerry and Patrick’s chemistry is undeniable, but what chance does this holiday romance really have?


Filled with family ties, both rekindled and new, and sparkling with Christmas magic, BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CHRISTMAS delivers everything Mary Kay Andrews fans adore, all tied up in a hilarious, romantic gem of a novel.

 

My Thoughts:  My first Christmas book of 2023 (and it is 98 degrees outside).    Bright Lights, Big Christmas is the perfect Christmas book.  Mary Kay Andrews set the bar high with each book and she leaped over that bar with this book.

The family business of selling Christmas trees brings Kerry to New York where she connects with an amazing neighborhood.   In that neighborhood, she connects with a divorced dad with a young son.   The flirting was fun and the way she took that young boy under her wing made her a wonderful person.   She gave young Austin the ability to be himself and gave him the attention he craves. Her relationship with Patrick, the dad, seemed to move a little quick for me but it is true that when you know who is right for you, you know.    

My favorite character is Heinz (what a fun name).   His story is wonderful, and I love that it took almost the entire book before the rest of his story was told.   He connected with so many people in the neighborhood, but no one really knew him or his story.    Kerry was the person that went above and beyond to help him and she did not give up on that, in exchange for that he gave her the self-assurance she needed to step out of her own way and see what her future could be.

Mary Kay Andrews wrote another book that I could not put down.   No matter what the weather is outside, cozy up and pick up this book.    I recommend it.

Thank you St. Martin's Press for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. 

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Meet Mary Kay Andrews (taken from her website):  MARY KAY ANDREWS is the New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels (including The Homewreckers; The Santa Suit; The Newcomer; Hello, Summer; Sunset Beach; The High Tide Club; The Weekenders; Beach Town; Save the Date; Ladies’ Night; Christmas Bliss; Spring Fever; Summer Rental; The Fixer Upper; Deep Dish; Blue Christmas; Savannah Breeze; Hissy Fit; Little Bitty Lies; and Savannah Blues), and one cookbook, The Beach House Cookbook.

 

A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, she earned a B.A. in journalism from The University of Georgia. After a 14-year career working as a reporter at newspapers including The Savannah Morning News, The Marietta Journal, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she spent the final ten years of her career, she left journalism in 1991 to write fiction.

 

Her first novel, Every Crooked Nanny, was published in 1992 by HarperCollins. She went on to write ten critically acclaimed mysteries under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck. In 2002, she assumed the pen name Mary Kay Andrews with the publication of Savannah Blues. In 2006, Hissy Fit became her first New York Times bestseller, followed by fifteen more New York Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly bestsellers. To date, her novels have been published in German, Italian, Polish, Slovenian, Hungarian, Dutch, Czech and Japanese.

 

She and her family divide their time between Atlanta and Tybee Island, GA, where they cook up new recipes in three restored beach homes, The Breeze Inn, Ebbtide, and Coquina Cottage—all named after fictional places in Mary Kay’s novels, and all available to rent through Tybee Vacation Rentals. In between cooking, spoiling her grandkids, and plotting her next novel, Mary Kay is an intrepid treasure hunter whose favorite pastime is junking and fixing up old houses.