The Mistletoe Inn

The Mistletoe Inn by Richard Paul Evans

Hardcover, 300 pages
Published November 17th 2015 by Simon Schuster
Audio CD performed by Madeleine Maby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Kimberly Rossi was little her mother killed herself. Harbouring feelings of anger hate and resentment she blames herself.
Depression, death and suicide, feelings of being inadequate and unworthy of love, as well as spousal abuse, prevail for the most part. Kimberly seems to always attract the wrong guys and marries an abusive man after so many failed relationships. It was sad regardless of being a romance novel.

Until her father bought her a ticket to a writer's workshop for Christmas, Kim's life was going nowhere. I thought it brilliant taking words out of, what seemed to be, Kimberly Rossi's diary at the beginning of each chapter. Loved that. Also, her dreams of becoming a romance writer were darkened with the news her Dad had colon cancer.

Kimberly is a smart cookie and she can do without a man but when the right one comes along, how will she know? It seems to be that certain secrets were too good to be true and when it is revealed who Zeke was, it makes her retreat back home with her dad. Mr. Rossi is now recovering from cancer BECAUSE of having the right connections. He could get the care he needed.

Goodreads Summary 

At thirty-two Kimberly Rossetti, a finance officer at a Lexus car dealership has had her heart broken more times than she wants to remember. With two failed engagements, a divorce and again alone with no prospects, she hardly seems the type to dream of being a published romance author. Dreading another holiday alone, she signs up for The Mistletoe Retreat, a nine-day writing retreat in Burlington, VT. Deep inside Kimberly knows she's at a junction in her life and it's time to either fulfill her dream or let it go. The other reason she decides to attend the conference is because famed romance writer, H.T. Cowell, once the best selling romance writer in America, and the author whose books instilled in her the desire to be a writer, will be speaking in public for the first time in more than a decade. In one of her breakout sessions, Kimberly meets another aspiring writer, and one of the few men at the conference, Zeke, an intelligent man with a wry wit who seems as interested in Kimberly as he is in the retreat. As Kimberly begins to open up to him about her stories and dreams, she inadvertently reveals her own troubled past. As Zeke helps her to discover why her books fail to live up to their potential she begins to wonder if he's really talking more about her life than her literature. But as she grows closer to him, she realizes that Zeke has his own darkness, a past he's unwilling to talk about. The theme of The Mistletoe Inn is that like literature, relationships must be lived with passion and vulnerability to succeed.