Christmas Love Year Round Review and Giveaway!

Cami Richardson is good at chasing away the men in her life: first Gavin Kinkaid, a former classmate she’d helped to bully, and later, her husband who left her widowed and a single mom. Now all she wants is to bring a smile back to her eight-year-old son. What she doesn’t expect is for Gavin to become her new neighbor.
Gavin wants to settle down after serving in the Air Force and mend the separation between him and his dad. What he didn’t count on is his changing feelings when he sees Cami as a kind woman instead of his former adversary.
When Cami’s son blindsides them both during the Christmas season, is their reunion at risk or will it grow stronger?

My thoughts: Years before, Cami and her friends bullied Gavin in school. Now, life has takes some unexpected turns and they are neighbors. When her son looks to Gavin to be a mentor, Cami and Gavin must work through past hurts and guilt to build a new relationship. While the topic is a heavy one, Elaine handles it beautifully, bringing to life the characters and their story. This is a wonderful story of forgiveness and grace.
I received this book through Celebrate Lit. This is my honest review and was in no way influenced by receiving a complimentary copy.

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About Elaine:
Elaine Stock is the author of the novels Her Good Girl, winner of the 2018 American Fiction Awards in the Christian Inspirational category, and Always With You, which won the 2017 Christian Small Publishers Association Book of the Year Award in fiction. And You Came Along, a novella, released in December 2017. Her novels fuse romance, family drama and faith in a clean fiction style. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Romance Writers of America, and Women’s Fiction Writers Association. In addition to Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, she hangs out on her active blog, Everyone’s Story, dedicated to uplifting and encouraging all readers through the power of story and hope.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, Elaine has now been living in upstate, rural New York with her husband for more years than her stint as a NYC gal. She enjoys long walks down country roads, visiting New England towns, and of course, a good book.

Guest post from the Author:
To love someone with all of your heart is the only thing that matters in this world.
Readers often ask the origin of a story idea. When I wrote my first published novel, Always With You, I was asked if my husband was a white supremacist. No! When Her Good Girl released, the questions of whether my mother practiced Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy popped up as well. Although my mother unfortunately did suffer another mental illness, it wasn’t MSP. And now Christmas Love Year Round, Book 1 of the Kindred Lake romance series, is on sale. What does fuel my writing? What is a connecting theme between the stories I write?
Love.
Love is the most essential relationship we must share between all…between family members, friends, neighbors…between strangers, enemies, those who live differently than us, and foreign countries.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35 (NIV)
Yet, isn’t honest love the hardest thing to do? Perhaps it is also the most difficult virtue to teach and the most vexing passion to express.
Imagine this scenario: You’re a widowed mom with an impressionable eight-year-old son. Your conscience is riddled with the worry that you might have pushed your husband toward his death, and that’s on top of the weight bearing down on you from your childhood days of participating with others to bully a particular family in town.
Then, the one boy who was part of that picked-upon family, now a grown man and stirringly handsome purchases the house across the street from you. You’ll likely see him every day.
And, with a gulp, you realize…that you want to see him. That actually, despite all that transpired between the two of you back in high school, you’re Attracted to him with a Capital A.
Might that magnetism between the two of you be mutual?
This is the set-up between Cami and Gavin in Christmas Love Year Round. Will these two former adversaries forgive not only each other but themselves as well and take loving one’s neighbor to the next step of falling in love and making amends into amens?
May each of you be blessed with love and joy year round!

For a complete list of the blog posts, go here.

Giveaway:
To celebrate her tour, Elaine is giving away
Grand Prize: Winner’s choice between print (US only) or Kindle of Christmas Love Year Round, Kindle of And You Came Along (companion novel to Christmas Love Year Round), and a $10.00 Amazon Gift Card
1st and 2nd Prizes: a Kindle edition of Christmas Love Year Round!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link here to enter.