Release Day! Christmas People by Iva-Marie Palmer ~ My Thoughts #ChristmasPeople

Happy Release Day!

Congrats Iva-Marie

on release today of

Christmas People!

Christmas People by Iva-Marie Palmer

Holiday, Romance, Magic Realism, 304 pages

Published September 30, 2025, by St. Martin's Griffin

Some people are Christmas people, but Jill Jacobs is most certainly not. She hasn’t been ever since her hometown love broke her heart on Christmas Day three years ago. After that, Jill moved to L.A. to pursue her dream of becoming a screenwriter. She hasn’t been home in years to avoid her ex, but this winter she finds herself back in drab, suburban Illinois for the holidays.

After one very hazy night, Jill wakes up to a hometown that's filled with jolly neighbors, covered in pristine white snow, and shimmering with the smell of nutmeg. She realizes that this is more than just a bad hangover… she's stuck in a Heartfelt movie. One set in her town, starring real people from her life, including her family, her high school crush (uber perfect, owns a bakery, and definitely a Christmas Person), and of course, her ex —handsome as ever and now exclusively clad in plaid flannel.

The only way out of this bizarro world is to complete the plot of the movie, including a holiday bake off and a cookie-sweet love story. To get home in time for Christmas, Jill must act out a picture-perfect holiday romance with the one that got away, all while her ex watches on. Fa la la la freaking la….

My thoughts about Christmas People ~~

(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 lines.)

First line—"This woman could be me if I'd made better choices. Or I could be her is maybe what I really mean."

Christmas People is the perfect Hallmark Christmas movie that's inside a story that isn't a Hallmark Christmas movie. Does that sound crazy? It kinda is.

Jill finally goes home for Christmas, after 3 years of avoiding her hometown. And avoiding her ex. After she overindulges one night out on the town, she wakes up to find herself in the perfect Christmas town with everyone filled with the Christmas spirit. It's a lot to wrap her head around. She is surprised at the changes in people but more surprised at herself and how much she is enjoying this new world. What will happen when she 'wakes up' to her real reality?

Christmas People was a very enjoyable, fun escape for me and I loved every minute of it, savoring all of the holiday cheer and adventure. I'm a sucker for Christmas stories this time of year and this one was an excellent getaway read. I highly recommend it if, you too, love Christmas stories, especially if you are a fan of Hallmark Christmas movies. 

I received an ARC of Christmas People and this is my honest opinion.

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About the author

Iva-Marie Palmer is the author of the young adult novels Gimme Everything You Got and The End of the World as We Know It. She also wrote the Gabby Garcia's Ultimate Playbook series and Oh My Dog! for middle grade readers, as well as the books Romeo, Juliet and Jim and the Edgar Award-nominated The Jules Verne Prophecy with co-writer Larry Schwarz. Christmas People is her first adult novel.

Before writing professionally, Palmer worked as an award-winning community news reporter in Chicago's South Suburbs and as a web editor for the Walt Disney Company. She also got to know many a Christmas person working at a Hallmark store through high school and college.

Palmer now resides in Burbank, California with her husband and two sons. ~ Goodreads

Connect with Iva-Marie

Website | Goodreads | Instagram | Substack

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Release Day! The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman ~ My Thoughts #TheTroubleWithYou @StMartinsPress

Happy Release Day!

Congratulations Ellen

on the release today of

The Trouble with You!

The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman

Historical Fiction, 356 pages

Published February 20, 2024 by St. Martin's Griffin

In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each.

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II, when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble with You is the story of Fanny Fabricant, whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Educated for a career as a wife and mother, she is torn between her cousin Mimi, who is determined to keep her a “nice girl,” and her aunt Rose, who has a rebellious past of her own.

Forging a new life, she gets a job in radio serials. Then through her friendship with an actress who stars in and a man who writes the series, she comes face-to-face with the blacklist, which is wrecking lives.

Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light-years away and strangely immediate.

    

My thoughts about The Trouble with You ~~

(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 lines—"December 25, 1947 ~ She was going to be a flower girl. She was six years old, well five and a half, and had a red velvet dress with a red satin sash because it was a Christmas wedding, and she was going  to walk down the aisle with a basket of rose pedals and drop them on a long silk carpet."

Once again, I found myself totally engrossed in an Ellen Feldman novel about the past. I love her historical fiction stories. 

The Trouble with You takes us into the life of Fanny Fabricant, a single mom just trying to make ends meet. When she takes a job working for a radio serial producer, she is introduced to a whole different world from the sheltered life she had led. 

And once again, Ms. Feldman introduced me to a part of history that I wasn't that familiar with—the blacklisting of the writers and others after the war. Ms. Feldman writes so well and makes each story enjoyable, with her interesting characters and beautifully written prose. Each story is educational, while also entertaining. 

The Trouble with You is the perfect story for all historical fiction lovers. Highly recommend.

I received a copy of The Trouble with You from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

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About the author

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Scottsboro, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. She writes both fiction and social history, and has published articles on the history of divorce, plastic surgery, Halloween, the Normandie, and many other topics, as well as numerous book reviews. She has also lectured extensively around the country and in Germany and England, and is a sought-after speaker to reading groups both in person and by telephone.

She grew up in northern New Jersey and attended Bryn Mawr College, from which she holds a B.A. and an M.A. in modern history. After further graduate studies in history at Columbia University, she worked for a New York publishing house.

She lives in New York City and East Hampton, New York, with her husband and Cairn terrier named Lucy. 

Connect with Ellen

Website | Goodreads | Amazon

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New Release! The Living and the Lost by Ellen Feldman ~ My Thoughts #TheLivingAndTheLost #NetGalley

Congrats Ellen

on the release of

The Living and the Lost!

The Living and the Lost by Ellen Feldman

Jewish American Fiction, 336 pages

Published September 7, 2021 by St. Martin's Griffin

From the author of Paris Never Leaves You, a gripping story of a young German Jewish woman who returns to Allied Occupied Berlin from America to face the past and unexpected future.

Millie Mosbach and her brother David escaped to the United States just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister in Berlin. Now they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family. Millie works in the office responsible for rooting out the most dedicated Nazis from publishing. Like most of their German-born American colleagues, the siblings suffer from rage at Germany and guilt at their own good fortune. Only Millie’s boss, Major Harry Sutton, seems strangely eager to be fair to the Germans.

Living and working in bombed-out Berlin, a latter day Wild West where the desperate prey on the unsuspecting; spies ply their trade; black markets thrive, and forbidden fraternization is rampant, Millie must come to terms with a past decision made in a moment of crisis, and with the enigmatic sometimes infuriating Major Sutton who is mysteriously understanding of her demons. Atmospheric and page-turning, The Living and the Lost is a story of survival, love, and forgiveness, of others and of self.

My thoughts about The Living and the Lost ~~

(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—"Berlin had never been so quiet. Cars and trucks lay in useless pieces. Even bicycles were scarce."

It seems like I have been reading a lot of books about the war, Germany, Jews, and Berlin recently. Maybe my new favorite genre? I don't know. But I do know that I never tire of the stories that so many talented authors have created. 

The Living and the Lost is a beautifully written, heartwarming story that is centered around two siblings, Millie and David. They are German Jews who escaped to the United States but then go back to Germany after the war to help the people left behind, while also searching for their parents and little sister.  

I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this story. It was interesting to learn about the hardships that were endured and the coping mechanisms that people adopted to get through the tough times. Millie and David each had their own secrets and guilt about the past but they also had each other to lean on. 

I highly recommend The Living and the Lost if you are into historical fiction, especially World War 2 history. This is a story that will touch your heart.

I received a copy of The Living and the Lost from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

About the author

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Scottsboro, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. She writes both fiction and social history, and has published articles on the history of divorce, plastic surgery, Halloween, the Normandie, and many other topics, as well as numerous book reviews. She has also lectured extensively around the country and in Germany and England, and is a sought-after speaker to reading groups both in person and by telephone.

She grew up in northern New Jersey and attended Bryn Mawr College, from which she holds a B.A. and an M.A. in modern history. After further graduate studies in history at Columbia University, she worked for a New York publishing house.

She lives in New York City and East Hampton, New York, with her husband and Cairn terrier named Lucy. 

Connect with Ellen

Website | Goodreads | Amazon

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Until I Find You by Rea Frey ~ My Thoughts #UntilIFindYou #NetGalley

Until I Find You

Until I Find You by Rea Frey
316 pages
Published August 11th 2020 by St. Martin's Griffin

Celebrated author Rea Frey brings you her most explosive, emotional, taut domestic drama yet about the powerful bond between mothers and children…and how far one woman will go to bring her son home.

The Set-Up

Soon, Rebecca Gray won’t be able to see. Diagnosed in her twenties with a degenerative eye disease, each day her world grows a little darker. She’s moved to the suburbs to raise her son, Jackson. In the wake of her husband's death, it should be a quieter, easier way of life.

It won’t be.

The Moment That Changes Everything

When Bec awakes after fainting in the park, she makes promises to start taking better care of herself. When her son begins to cry, she approaches the crib.

Reaches in.

Picks him up.

But he’s not her son.

The Search

There’s nothing Bec won’t do to find Jackson. But she’s a blind woman in a world where seeing is believing. The police think she’s confused. Her friends don’t see any differences. Relying on the conviction of her instinct and the power of a mother’s love, Bec must push the limits of her world to uncover what happened to her baby boy…and bring him home for good.

     

My thoughts about Until I Find You ~~ 

(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—"Someone's coming. My feet expertly navigate the familiar path toward the path without my cane. Footsteps advance behind me."

I can't even imagine a life like Rebecca's—a blind, single mom who is still mourning the death of her husband. Just being able to raise a child alone is hard, but then to not be able to see that wonderful child and the world around him would make it even harder.

Things start happening in Bec's world, things that make her think that someone is messing with her or out to get her. Is she just being paranoid? Then one day, when she picks up her son out of his bed she discovers it isn't him. It's someone else's baby. Why won't anyone believe her?

I loved and hated this story—loved it because of the complexity of what was happening to Bec and her son and all the clues thrown out as to 'who done it', and hated it for those very same reasons. I suspected everyone at some point and I never knew who Bec could trust. Just when I thought I was on the right path to the 'bad guy', the author would take me in a different direction. There were several times I just wanted to scream at everyone to take Bec seriously! She knows her own baby! Why won't they listen to her?

Until I Find You got me pretty worked up and stressed out for Rebecca—and I loved every minute of it! This is a book that will easily draw you in and keep you intrigued to the very end.

I received a copy of Until I Find You from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

About the author

Rea Frey is the author of Not Her Daughter, Because You're Mine, and her upcoming release, Until I Find You.

She is also the founder of Writeway, where aspiring authors become published authors. ~ Goodreads

Connect with Rea

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Facebook | Instagram

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Release Day! Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman ~ My Thoughts, an Excerpt, and a #Giveaway! #ParisNeverLeavesYou #NetGalley

Paris Never Leaves You

Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman

Print & e-book, 368 pages

Published August 4th 2020 by St. Martin's Griffin

“Masterful. Magnificent. A passionate story of survival and a real page turner. This story will stay with me for a long time.” —Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey

Living through WWII working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim, she is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life?

Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Paris Never Leaves You is an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.

The war is over, but the past is never past. 

Purchase Paris Never Leaves You

Amazon | B&N | IndieBound

BAM | Apple | Kobo | Google

My thoughts about Paris Never Leaves You ~~ 

(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—"Paris, 1944: They were ripping off the stars. Filthy fingers with broken dirt-encrusted nails were yanking and peeling and prying. Who would have thought they still had the strength?"

I enjoy reading books in this time-frame, the time of WWII. This era fascinates me—the struggles and hardships that the people had to endure are unbelievable. And the fact that people were able to go on and make a life for themselves after is commendable.

Charlotte did what she had to do to survive and to keep her daughter safe in Paris during the war. The story was heartbreaking to read at points but those scenes only reinforced Charlotte's strength and the power of the love of a mother for her child. 

Paris Never Leaves You is a memorable look at life in Paris when the world was falling down around our feet. The characters feel real, the drama feels scary, and the descriptive paragraphs transported me there. This is a must read if you love historical fiction stories set in this time period.

I received an ARC of Paris Never Leaves You from the publisher and this is my honest opinion.

Be sure to scroll down to enter my giveaway for a copy of this wonderful book!

Excerpt

One

New York, 1954

Charlotte spotted the letter as soon as she stepped into her office. There was no reason it should have caught her eye. The desk was littered with papers and envelopes. Stacks of manuscripts and books filled the shelves of the small cubicle and spilled over onto the two chairs. Certainly the airmail envelope didn’t make it stand out. Most of the books she published were American editions of European works, and a good deal of her mail arrived in those tissue-thin blue envelopes. The only explanation for its attracting her attention was that she’d already gone through her morning mail and the afternoon delivery hadn’t yet arrived. Perhaps the letter had gone to another editor by mistake, and he or she had left it on Charlotte’s desk while she was upstairs in the art department. Or perhaps the mailroom had overlooked it in the morning sorting.

Gibbon & Field was a prestigious publishing house, but a certain loucheness lurked behind the scenes. That was the fault of Horace Field, the publisher. He was too forgiving, or perhaps only cannily manipulative. She’d had her earliest inkling of the trait the first Christmas after she’d come to work at the house. Leaving the office one evening at the same time, she and Horace had entered the elevator together to find a young man from the production department struggling to balance two or three oversize art books and several of a more conventional trim size. When he saw Horace, he colored an unhappy Christmas red.

“I see you’ve taken our ads to heart, Seth,” Horace said. “‘There’s a book for everyone on your Christmas list.’”

The young man turned a deeper red and shot out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened. That was unusual. The staff usually deferred to Horace getting on and off elevators, and everywhere else.

“Are you going to take the books out of his salary?” she’d asked as they’d followed him across the lobby.

“Not on your life.”

“It would teach him a lesson.”

“The only lesson I want to teach him, Charlie, is to work his tail off for the greater glory of G&F.”

“And you think encouraging him to walk out the door with an armful of purloined books will do that?”

“I think the next time he asks for a raise and doesn’t get it, he’ll remember all the books he’s filched and feel guilty, or at least compensated. Same with the expense accounts the editors and travelers turn in. They think they’re stealing me blind, but a guilty conscience breeds contrition. Maybe even loyalty. They feel they owe the house something in return. That’s why I worry about you. Those expense accounts you file are a travesty. If the other editors get wind of them, they’ll never forgive you for spoiling the game.”

Horace’s philosophy permeated the entire publishing house from the grand larceny of the production department, run by a man rumored to have ties to the Mafia, to the petty pilfering and general slacking off of the mail- room. That must be why the letter had been delivered late. And the timing was the only reason she noticed it. It had nothing to do with a sixth sense, in which she definitely did not believe.

She sat behind the desk and picked up the envelope. Her name and the G&F address were written, not typed. The handwriting wasn’t familiar. There was no return ad- dress on the upper left-hand corner. She turned it over. As soon as she saw the name, she realized why she hadn’t recognized the handwriting. When had they put anything in writing? No, that wasn’t true. He’d written her once, a year or so after the end of the war. The letter had taken months to wind its way through the Drancy records and the various agencies to reach her in New York. She’d taken solace in that. He didn’t know where she was, and he was still in Germany. She’d never answered that letter. The return address on this one was Bogotá, Colombia. So he’d got out after all. She was glad. She was also relieved. South America was still a long distance away.

What troubled her was not where he was but that now he knew where she was. She’d thought she’d been so careful. Neither her address nor her telephone number was listed in the book. The people who had tried to help her settle into her new life—social workers and do-gooders from various refugee organizations; her colleagues here and at other publishing houses; Horace Field’s wife, Hannah—had found the omission foolish and antisocial. “How do you expect to make a life for yourself in a new country,” Hannah had asked, “if no one can find you?” Charlotte hadn’t argued with her. She’d merely gone on paying the small fee to be unlisted. Gradually Hannah and everyone else had stopped asking and chalked it up to what she’d been through. No one, including Hannah, knew what that was, but that didn’t stop them from speculating.

She wasn’t much easier to find in the office, though apparently he’d managed. Her name didn’t appear in the list of editors that ran down the left-hand side of the company stationery. Most publishing houses didn’t list editors on the stationery but that was another of Horace Field’s peculiar indulgences. A year after she’d come to work at G&F, he’d asked if she wanted to be included.

“Think of it as a sop,” he’d said.

“A sop?” She spoke four languages, could read two others, and had taken her degree at the Sorbonne in English literature, but in those days she was still having trouble with some American slang.

“Compensation for the slave wages we pay you.”

“At least you didn’t suggest I make up the difference by stealing books,” she’d said, and added that she didn’t want her name on the stationery but thanked him all the same. Nonetheless, despite her absence in the phone book and on the company stationery, her name did occasion- ally turn up in acknowledgments in the books she worked on. And my gratitude to Charlotte Foret for steering my vessel safely through the turbulent waters of American publishing. My thanks to Charlotte Foret, who first saw that a book about the Dutch Golden Age written by a Dutchman would appeal to American audiences. The question was how he’d managed to get his hands on a US edition in Europe, or now South America. The various consulates had libraries to spread the American gospel among the local populations, but the books she published rarely spread the American gospel. Nonetheless, he must have found one. Or else he’d tracked her down through a refugee agency. Once in America, she’d distanced herself from the émigré or immigrant or refugee—choose your term—groups, but she’d had to file the usual papers and obtain the necessary documents to get here. She was traceable.

From Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman. Copyright © 2020 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Griffin.

About the author

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Terrible Virtue, The Unwitting, Next to Love, Scottsboro (shortlisted for the Orange Prize), The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank (translated into nine languages), and Lucy. Her novel Terrible Virtue was optioned by Black Bicycle for a feature film.

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We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall ~ My Thoughts #WeCameHereToShine

We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall 
Paperback, 384 pages
Published June 16th 2020 by St. Martin's Griffin

At the iconic 1939 New York World’s Fair, two ambitious young women—a down-on-her-luck actress and an aspiring journalist—form an unlikely friendship as they navigate a world of possibility and find out what they are truly made of during a glorious summer of spectacle and potential…

Gorgeous Vivi is about to begin filming her first starring role in a Hollywood picture when the studio head ships her off to New York as a favor to a friend. She’s assigned the leading role in the heralded Aquacade synchronized swimming spectacular at the World’s Fair, a fate she believes will destroy her film career. If she performs well, she’ll have another chance at stardom, but with everything working against her, will her summer lead to opportunity or failure?

Plucky Max dreams of becoming a serious journalist, but when her job at the New York Times doesn’t pan out, she finds herself begrudgingly working for the daily paper of the World’s Fair. As her ideas are continually overlooked by her male counterparts and her career prospects are put in jeopardy, Max must risk everything to change the course of her life.

When Max and Vivi’s worlds collide, they forge an enduring friendship. One that teaches them to go after what matters most during the most meaningful summer of their lives. 

My thoughts about We Came Here to Shine ~~

(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—"Amid dark clouds and heavy rain, hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic visitors turned out to watch as President Roosevelt officially opened the 1939 World's Fair yesterday with a rousing speech promoting 'peace and good-will among all nations.'"

What a wonderful look back at a time that probably most of us don't think about when we think of 'historical fiction'. We Came Here to Shine is set in 1939 at the New York World's Fair. Life for both Vivi and Max take unexpected turns when they find themselves dropped into job opportunities that neither of them want.

Told in alternating chapters of the two women's points of view, we learn a lot about the women—their pasts, their dreams, their loves, and their disappointments. The summer of 1939 might break the two women, or it just might make them stronger. I enjoyed watching the characters grow but it was hard watching them struggle. But remember the times, it wasn't always easy for women back then.

This was also a wonderful look at a World's Fair, an event I've never had a chance to attend. It would have been amazing to experience something of that magnitude. Having the World's Fair as the backdrop to the story of these two women made the experience of reading this book just that more interesting.

We Came Here to Shine is a wonderful escape read when most of us are stuck at home. Give it a try!  

I received a copy of We Came Here to Shine from Goodreads and this is my honest opinion.

About the author

I am the author of two works of historical fiction: We Came Here to Shine and The Subway Girls along with two earlier works of contemporary fiction: The Balance Front and On Grace. I grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

My writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, POPSUGAR, Writer’s Digest, and Glamour. In addition, I have spoken extensively on work-life balance and I'm the founder of The Balance Project interview series.

I live in Purchase, NY, with my husband and our three sons. I love to read, hike, see movies, and make elaborate cheese plates for Friday night happy hour at my house. I'm learning how to watercolor and trying to figure out how to knit. ~ Goodreads

Connect with Susie

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

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