Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket’s Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four, all of them grown and living in varying states of disarray. Patrick, the eldest, is a hedge fund manager with a guilty conscience. Kevin, a bartender, is secretly sleeping with a French housekeeper named Isabelle. Ava, a school teacher, is finally dating the perfect guy but can’t get him to commit. And Bart, the youngest and only child of Kelley’s second marriage to Mitzi, has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines.

As Christmas approaches, Kelley is looking forward to getting the family together for some quality time at the inn. But when he walks in on Mitzi kissing Santa Claus (or the guy who’s playing Santa at the inn’s annual party), utter chaos descends. With the three older children each reeling in their own dramas and Bart unreachable in Afghanistan, it might be up to Kelley’s ex-wife, nightly news anchor Margaret Quinn, to save Christmas at the Winter Street Inn.

Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, a small house fire, many shots of whiskey, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling, in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays.

2.5 out of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this book, but it fell flat for me. It took a bit for me to engage with the characters, but I’ve enjoyed other Hilderbrand books so I kept listening (to the audio). There were two things that really got in my way of enjoying this story:

– Unresolved character issues, specifically Margaret and Kelley. After twenty years and two completely different lives, they still think they’ll have the same issues … why?
– The ending. It just ended. Several things unresolved and left hanging. I suppose that could be an attempt to get me to read the next book in the series, but it left me unsatisfied, so I likely won’t.

This won’t prevent me from reading other Hilderbrand books, but this one didn’t work for me.

Rated PG-13 for drinking, drug use, and adult situations. Get your copy here!

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