Happy Release Day!
Congratulations Mary Kay
on the release today of
Bright Lights, Big Christmas!
Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews
Christmas, Fiction, 288 pages
Published September 26, 2023 by St. Martin's PressFrom Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Homewreckers and The Santa Suit, comes a novella celebrating love and the warm, glittering charm of the holiday season.
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 about Bright Lights, Big Christmas ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)
First line—"Kerry Clare Tolliver couldn't remember a time when the smell of a Fraser fir tree didn't make her smile."
I love MKA's stories and I love when the holiday books start popping up in my reading queue. Reading Bright Lights, Big Christmas was the perfect way to kick off my Christmas reading. A beloved author's wonderful holiday story. Win, win!
Kerry has to go help the family's Christmas tree farm business in the big city. Not what she was really wanting to do with her life but her family needs her, so she does it. Her meeting and making friends with all of the quirky people of the neighborhood is what made me love this story so much. She discovers that there are people who truly care for each other in this big, scary place.
I loved the relationships that developed within the story, so much love and friendship found among strangers. As always with a MKA story, I become totally engrossed with the storyline and the wonderful, caring characters. I loved this story and know I will be thinking about it long after I finished it. This was the perfect start to what I hope is more enjoyable Christmas reading for me. I highly recommend Bright Lights, Big Christmas!
I received an ARC of Bright Lights, Big Christmas via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.
About the author
Mary Kay Andews 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 twelve 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 two restored beach homes, The Breeze Inn and Ebbtide—both named after fictional places in Mary Kay’s novels, and both 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. ~ Goodreads
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