Honky Tonk Christmas by Carolyn Brown

Released: November 2010

Do you enjoy watching Hallmark movies and the Lifetime channel? Do men who talk like cowboys turn you on? Do you like reading novels that take place in small hickville towns?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then you will LOVE Honky Tonk Christmas!

Okay, so I'm just being silly. Carolyn Brown's Honky Tonk Christmas is actually quite fun, enjoyable and very romantic, but you've got to be in the mood for the aforementioned subject matter.


Honky Tonk Christmas is the fourth novel in Carolyn Brown's "Honky Tonk Bar" series. Each novel in this cowboy series is about a woman who inherits the Honky Tonk Bar which happens to come with a "love curse". Although each woman has some sort of troubled and dramatic past, love comes to the rescue in the form of a hunky, strapping man and they eventually live happily ever after.

Despite its title, Honky Tonk Christmas does not really occur during Christmas-time, so it's not really a holiday book per se.

Sharlene Waverly is the newest gal to run the bar and hires sexy carpenter Holt Jackson to help expand and renovate the bar in time for the holidays. As expected, Sharlene falls head over heels for Holt and his two adorable children whom he inherited from his dead sister.

Of course, not everything in the land of cowboy love is perfect right away because Holt and Sharlene have to battle the code of professionalism and their own emotional issues before they can truly be together.

From a romantic standpoint, I really enjoy how the chemistry builds up between Sharlene and Holt and is presented as a more mature, slower-paced relationship that grows stronger throughout the novel. I also like how Brown threw children into the mix to make it more twenty-first century. Being a single mother myself, I loved that! How realistic! Better yet, if you didn't read the other Honky Tonk books in the series, Brown revisits previous characters and storylines to give us a thorough history of the Honky Tonk Bar and its love curse.

At this point, I'm a little tired of the cowboy approach. I'm a city-girl and can only take so much of the cowboy lingo or whatever it's supposed to be. It's a little cheesy and overdone for me, but can be fun -- only if your mood allows.

My other reviews for Carolyn Brown romances:
Hell, Yeah
My Give a Damn's Busted

Check out Carolyn Brown's other novels, including Lucky in Love (2009), Pushin' Up Daisies (2009) and I Love This Bar (2010); all series "firsts".