Laird came to Marietta to find answers about his past. Tucker has returned home to help her twin sister plan her wedding to Tucker's ex. That part of the story was difficult for me to get behind. Who would date someone their sister had been intimate with? No thank you. Her sister gets upset at any reference to Tucker and Luke's past relationship. That is why you don't take your sister's rejects. Other than that I enjoyed the story. Both Tucker and Laird have been hurt and have a lot of baggage. Both have been heartbroken and don't want to go down that road again. All Tucker wants to do is be a good sister to her twin and to behave perfectly for the next month. Laird needs to find his family and get on with his life. When they meet there is an instant connection, but neither one of them is ready to follow their old paths and jump into bed. They spend the next month getting to know each other, sharing secrets and falling in love. Great read.

Merged review:

Laird came to Marietta to find answers about his past. Tucker has returned home to help her twin sister plan her wedding to Tucker's ex. That part of the story was difficult for me to get behind. Who would date someone their sister had been intimate with? No thank you. Her sister gets upset at any reference to Tucker and Luke's past relationship. That is why you don't take your sister's rejects. Other than that I enjoyed the story. Both Tucker and Laird have been hurt and have a lot of baggage. Both have been heartbroken and don't want to go down that road again. All Tucker wants to do is be a good sister to her twin and to behave perfectly for the next month. Laird needs to find his family and get on with his life. When they meet there is an instant connection, but neither one of them is ready to follow their old paths and jump into bed. They spend the next month getting to know each other, sharing secrets and falling in love. Great read.

Slow

The book was a little slow and seemed to be all over the place e in the first few chapters. I couldn't finish it. Definitely wasn't for me.

Tucker is the adventurous twin. Her choices have been risky and shock worthy to many but the thrill of the unknown for her outweighed the people she hurt. Now older and wiser from the life experience under her belt, the adrenaline rush of excitement has become the reflective voice of regret. The Christmas Challenge had it's share of growing pains, but it also learned from them. That is the takeaway from Tucker and Laird's journey. It takes more strength to face down fears than it does to run away from the pain of regret. To forgive and be forgiven was the ultimate reward in this story of redemption.

Merged review:

Tucker is the adventurous twin. Her choices have been risky and shock worthy to many but the thrill of the unknown for her outweighed the people she hurt. Now older and wiser from the life experience under her belt, the adrenaline rush of excitement has become the reflective voice of regret. The Christmas Challenge had it's share of growing pains, but it also learned from them. That is the takeaway from Tucker and Laird's journey. It takes more strength to face down fears than it does to run away from the pain of regret. To forgive and be forgiven was the ultimate reward in this story of redemption.

A touching story of coming home to find that everything has changed and there is nothing you can do to change it. Tucker is the screw up while her sister is the steady one who everyone depends on, but Tucker is determined to keep a low profile while she is home for her sister's wedding. She didn't count of meeting Laird, who is in town in the hope of finding his true family. As he falls in love with Tucker he finds the family he is missing.

I am going to do something that I may not have done before: I am offering a huge qualification on this review because I feel conflicted.

Let me get this tidbit out of the way: I didn’t like Tucker McTavish. I don’t care that she’s over-sexed. I don’t care that she’s mouthy. I don’t care that she wants to do the right things for the wrong reasons. What I did care about was the fact that she took herself so seriously, that she was superficial, and that she wanted to lick sweat off of a yoga mat when the guy whose sweat it was, was in the shower. I may never get that particular image out of my poor decaying mind, especially since I was eating lunch at the time.

In the romance genre, the reader really needs to like both characters. Lately I’ve read at least four books in which the “heroine” is unlikable. Is this becoming a trend?

In the past couple of days I have given Tucker a lot of thought to see if she would grow on me. She didn’t. She needed a sense of humor, especially about herself, because she just took everything, most things of her own making, way too seriously.

Laird, on the other hand, is practically ideal. He is introspective, active, good-looking, bearded (haha!), and has a quiet charm.

So, back to my qualification: why? Why am I qualifying this review? Because I wonder if my perception would have been altered if I had read the other books in the series. Maybe that’s a copout because if a book says it’s a standalone, it should. Maybe I shouldn’t believe that seeing Tucker through the prism of the other novels would alter my perception of her. And, maybe it helps just to write this down in this rambling fashion and realize that it probably wouldn’t have helped.

Tucker bad. Laird good (actually perfect).

The Christmas Challenge was well-written and I could easily read the other novels in the series since Tucker would not be the “heroine.”

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I rarely read books set in Montana because I live here and I hate it when authors get it wrong. This book didn't get it wrong because there wasn't much mentioned about the area at all, which was ironically disappointing. It sounded like the author was trying to set up a fictional town right in my area and it would have been nice to get a deeper sense of place, a description of the mountains, the wilderness. Instead, it was just a bunch of names, some that were real and that weren't. Bummer.
Also disappointing was the disconnectedness of the story. It seemed more like a series of vignettes somewhat sewn together. There was just SO MUCH going on that it was hard to really get a handle on what it was that really brought Tucker and Laird together.
Tucker is back in Marietta to try and patch up her relationship with her twin sister Tanner. See, Tucker's been sort of the wild child, wandering the states being a rodeo star and trying to make it in Hollywood. She also "knew" Tanner's fiance. Like, in the biblical sense. And she even tried to get him back after the two were involved. So now she's back and trying to heal old wounds. Needing all the help she can get, she stops off at Miracle Lake. While she's there, she meets Laird who is in town trying to figure out what happened to his fraternal twin. See, Laird was adopted from a teenage girl who had two babies but he didn't know until recently and he's not even sure his twin survived. The reader can figure it out pretty darn fast and it's sort of annoying how long it's drawn out. In fact, I wish that had been shortened to make more room for the story between Tanner and Laird. It was just a bit superficial. Wish we had seen more of what made them want to be together other than explosive chemistry.