"Christmas at the Lakeside Resort" by Susan Schild

"The rest of the day, Jenny felt strangely languid, like she was swimming underwater. She drank peppermint tea, nibbled chocolates and took the boys on meandering walks. Though the day was as gorgeous as fall got in North Carolina, with red and magenta leaves on the trees and the sky a blue only seen in Monet paintings, Jenny barely noticed …"

— Christmas at the Lakeside Resort

This book is actually one chosen as this month's selection for a book club I'm in with some local friends. I immediately loved the cover since I have a real hankering for a vintage camper of my own, and I was also intrigued to learn that author Susan Schild "writes heartwarming, feel-good Southern novels of love and family featuring women over forty bouncing back from trouble, having adventures, and finding their happily ever afters." A great idea!

This book was a romance and not my usual cozy mystery, but if there is such a thing as a cozy romance, this would be it. Jenny Beckett is a down-on-her-luck forty-two-year-old tutor whose fiancé fell in love with his physical therapist and canceled his and Jenny's plans for a Christmas wedding. As a result, Jenny is not in much of a fa-la-la mindset. To add insult to injury, she learns the property where she rents a small cottage is being sold and so she needs to move, pronto. Then Jenny gets a phone call from a law firm, the caller saying he has some news regarding Jenny's no-account father, whom she hasn't heard from in ages.

It turns out that Jenny's father, Jax, has died of a heart attack, and despite her assumption that he died penniless and she's being called about his debts, he actually owned a house as well as some unfinished cabins on valuable lakefront property there in North Carolina. With hope on the horizon, Jenny leaves her tutoring job, moves into one of her father's cabins—where she begins to reconsider her assumptions about her late father—and begins to build a new life for herself.

Through a chance encounter at her neighborhood hardware store, Jenny meets a local man, Luke, who agrees to serve as her contractor and help her finish the cabins, and his sister, Alice, helps as well. Jenny succeeds in getting a loan for the new construction on the cabins, but she's quickly burning through the money as the cabins take shape. Even Luke refuses to promise her they'll be completed by the middle of December, when she needs to see some money rolling in from reservations. And although Jenny has sworn off men and vows not to get involved with another one, she can't seem to help falling for Luke. As the cabins near completion, she realizes she's going to miss this kind, handsome man she's gotten to know so well.

Schild has crafted a lovely and hope-filled holiday romance, and her well-drawn characters in a sparkling setting will make readers want to plan a follow-up visit to the Lakeside Resort.