Title: Christmas in Welcombe Bay
Author: Kate Darroch
Genre: Christian Second Chance Romance: Recovery and Redemption
Book Blurb:
Christian Second Chance for Lasting Love in idyllic Welcombe Bay.
Christian Second Chance for Lasting Love in idyllic Welcombe Bay on the gorgeous Devon coast.
The second book in the Sweets By The Sea Recovery & Redemption saga from Kate Darroch, 2022 Incipere award for Best Christian Fiction.
Powerful stories of men and women hoping to find togetherness in a caring Christian community.
We follow Eric and Lily after their Thanksgiving feast and join the Christmas festivities preparations of the townsfolk.
Bob rents a cottage from Miss Agatha over Christmas. Nurse Ruth finds her hospital nights filled with more than just routine ward checks. Hector, a children's entertainer volunteering over the Christmas season, weaves tales of magic and hope that captivate her and touch her heart.
For Ruth, will this be third time lucky in love?
Early readers say:
Ruth: rarely have I seen so strong a Christian character portrayed so humbly.
The entire community is wonderfully depicted.
Kate Darroch has a real gift for showing the whole person of each character.
I'm instantly drawn to Hector.
A lovely story
Excerpt:
In the fading winter light, darkness closing in fast, Hector stands hesitating in one of the stark, antiseptic corridors of Sable Barns Hospital. Its walls are painted a pale pastel green. A softly ticking clock high up on one of the walls, out of his eyeline, marks the passage of time in this place of suffering and sorrow, where time so often seems to stand still. He ought to open the door to this room and go in, introduce himself. Yet he lingers.
At forty, Hector looks a lot more comfortable with the world around him than he really is. His smooth blond hair, kind grey eyes with faint laughter lines etched around them, and rather pudgy shape, all proclaim a man more attuned to garnering small comforts than tussling with the people who make the rules. This appearance is not deceptive. Hector lives his life in the realms of imagination. The fairy tales he reads to the children, wicked witches and ravening wolves notwithstanding, feel safer to him than the nursing staff’s break room he’s standing in front of now.
Hector feels unsettled and with good cause. He has been placed in a situation where he must deal with formidable adults again. He would much rather not be in that place. Who needs coffee at this time of day? Hector wants his supper. But what can he do? He wants to go on entertaining the children. He wants to make a real contribution. He wants to be part of what's happening in this hospital in a good way. He shudders a little, remembering the thousand anxious hours he has spent in this hospital, not in a good way. In emotional turmoil, hoping for his little sister Meg to get better. Telling stories to children who are in the same situation now as Meg was then feels like the right thing to do. A good way to cope with the uncaring world around him. His family's reaction to his devotion to Meg at a time when they felt that his attention was badly needed elsewhere is not something that this man can think of without pain. Especially since Meg now seems more aligned with his parents’ position than his own. In fact, at the moment Hector is not speaking to any of them. That hurts too. That little Meg would turn against him.
Hector shrinks from the maelstrom of hospital politics. He just wants to tell stories to the kids. Why can't he do that? A man who is very shy with women at the best of times, this storyteller doesn’t want to sit down with the ward sister and explain to her why she should allow him to continue soothing the ki-- children. He must remember to call them children.
Visiting the wards, telling stories in the children’s wards, had begun under the auspices of the Friends of the Hospital. They’d asked for volunteers. But apparently he has put in more facetime than is expected of volunteers, and now he must turn himself into an “initiative” if he wants to go on. . . and gain official permission first. Beginning with the ward sister and her nurses.
A slim auburn-haired nurse passes by and then suddenly halts, stopping dead in the middle of the corridor. She returns to the door he stands hesitantly in front of.
“They didn’t get around to giving you your key fob yet, eh?” she asks, her green eyes lighting up in a friendly smile. “Typical,” she adds, pulling out her access card and brushing it against the reader with an ease born of routine, her movements fluid and sure. “I could use a cup of coffee, anyway.”
She opens the door, and they enter the break room together. Suddenly, bearding dragons in their den doesn’t seem like such an impossible thing to do. Not with this pretty lady walking in beside him.
The smell of stewed coffee battling against the omnipresent sting of disinfectant seems less overpowering. The harsh fluorescents hurt his eyes less, the clatter of the vending machine seems less intrusive. Hector realises that he’s found an unlikely ally in this tired looking, gentle-eyed woman. Definitely not a girl. She has authority, but on her it’s not intimidating. How old is she? Thirtyish, perhaps. He has the weirdest feeling that she will help him to find his place in her world of pills and potties. And perhaps, who knows, he may be able to lead her into a wonderland of stories.
I’m Ruth,” she says, still smiling. “And you are…?”
Their journey has begun, a joint quest to make this small corner of the world a little brighter.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
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Share a holiday family tradition:
Since I was little, we have all gone to Midnight Mass, and then come home to have hot drinks and open our presents .
Why is your featured book perfect to get readers in the holiday mood?
This is a sweet tale of the British equivalent of Thanksgiving, Harvest Festival.
Followed by a Thanksgiving Feast, and leading into Christmas preparation, so it’s very much about the Winter Holidays.
What will put you even more in the holiday mood, it the delightful presents the characters give each other, especially the most important gift, caring.
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $75 Amazon gift card
Open internationally.
Runs December 1 – 31
Drawing will be held on January 2, 2024.
Author Biography:
Living on the picturesque Devon coastline, Kate Darroch combines her passion for reading and her experiences living in many countries to create compelling Travel Cozies, Sleuth Satire, and Christian Love Stories.
Màiri Maguire, a Scots Irish schoolteacher from 1970s Glasgow, the heroine of Kate's debut novel, Death in Paris, earned Kate many international book awards, including a Readers Favorite Gold Medal, consolidating her reputation as a notable author.
Kate hopes her readers will enjoy Màiri's adventures as much as she enjoys Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes, and The Perils of Pauline.
Kate’s next creation was Huntingdon Hart, a dry, witty, prescient, tongue-in-cheek combo of 007 and Sherlock Holmes, who's in love with a much older woman.
Kate's most recent opus is the Christian Second Chance for Lasting Love series, Sweets By the Sea, a depth saga of Recovery and Redemption which her readers insist is even more adorable than her Cozy Mysteries.
Social Media Links:
https://books.KateDarroch.com/ (a basket of free books)