It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (Reads) GIVEAWAY: An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn (+ guest post & book review)

An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn

Welcome back to our annual blog series spotlighting (over 60 again this year) new and recently-released Christmas reads!

Only TWO DAYS until Christmas!

We’re in the home stretch in our spotlights of several Christmasy releases from 2022. Most days will have more than one post, just FYI. So… snuggle in, grab your fave hot beverage and comfiest blanket, turn on some Christmas tunes and start your bookish Christmas list! Oh… and did I mention there are GIVEAWAYS with EACH POST in this series??!! (Because authors are awesome!)

AN AMISH CHRISTMAS AT THE APPLE BLOSSOM INN by Debra Torres & Tracy Fredrychowski
GENRE: Inspirational Contemporary/Amish Romance
PUBLISHER: The Tracer Group, LLC
RELEASE DATE: November 1, 2022
PAGES: 380

Two sisters. Two stories. One great Amish Christmas read.

Orphaned just weeks before Christmas, the Beiler sisters suddenly discover they could lose their home and what’s worse—each other. To make ends meet, sisters Sadie and Katie are plunged into working at Willow Spring’s Apple Blossom Inn.

But will their efforts be enough?

Sadie -Struggling with pride, Sadie yearns to bake scrumptious treats in the inn’s kitchen instead of cleaning floors and toilets. But when she makes the mistake of her life, can Sadie and the inn’s handsome maintenance worker Jubal King create a plan to help save her family and maybe even the Apple Blossom Inn?

Katie – On the cusp of a family tragedy, Katie must put her trust in the Lord and step into a mostly English world. When Jeremiah Hershberger returns to Willow Springs looking for answers, Katie sets out on a journey to help him discover secrets of his past.

Can these young women find a way to bring the joy of Christmas back to their family and to Willow Springs?

An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn is a unique blending of two parallel stories by two separate authors. Each story has a bit of romance, a sweet message, likable characters, and yummy food, and I was invested in both of them. Sadie and Katie are different in personality, like most sisters, but they are alike enough that the transition between the two storylines never felt jarring. The authors did well in weaving hints from the other’s novella into their own, keeping me intrigued all the way through.

I was especially delighted to realize that, while I have not read most of Fredrychowski’s books set in Willow Springs, I have read the one that features Sadie & Katie’s older sister Amanda and her romance. The Amish Christmas Gift Worth Waiting For was part of the Amish Christmas Miracles collection and was one of my fave stories of the 14 included. It was great to be able to see ‘the rest of the story’, so to speak, and I highly recommend that you read that one before reading An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn – though it’s not strictly necessary. Also exciting was the chance to see characters from Torres’ Willow Brook series (which I really enjoy) show up in this collaboration, and I thought the way they were included was quite clever.

Bottom Line: Both authors give readers a taste of their own writing styles & series while seamlessly working together to create an overarching narrative that unites each separate story and entertains readers from start to finish. Sadie & Katie are engaging characters who face respective challenges with grace and strength, and even the grumpy proprietor of the Apple Blossom Inn isn’t left unaffected. Sweet romance and a gentle faith message that points to Jesus can be found in each story, and readers will find themselves tracking down the backlists of whichever author they hadn’t previously read. A lovely way to unwind from Christmas festivities!

(I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the publisher. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.)

My Rating: 4 stars / enjoyed it!

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a new tradition

by Debra Torres, co-author of An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn

Hi book lovers! Super excited to have An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn featured in the “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (Reads)” giveaway series on Reading Is My SuperPower!

In writing An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn with my co-author Tracy Fredrychowski, I didn’t know what I was thinking when I picked German Christmas Stollen to be the Apple Blossom Inn’s 100-year-old secret recipe. I definitely wasn’t thinking about actually making the complicated, multi-step recipe myself, that was for sure!

But when it was time to promote the book, my co-author suggested we make a few recipes in our book to show our readers. Oh no! I should have had Sadie Beiler (the Amish baker in my story) make rice-crispy treats! 🙂

German Christmas Stollen is a sweet bread that typically includes rum-soaked raisins, candied citrus peel, and homemade marzipan.

MARZIPAN! What even is that?

Well, I forged ahead and learned how to make the holiday bread! And I even videotaped each step and included the process on my Amish Book Review channel on YouTube.

• You can watch my German Christmas Stollen video here: https://youtu.be/diDzxULzkAU.

After dusting the sweet bread with a thick coat of powdered sugar (to resemble the snowy landscape of Germany), the best part of making it is the taste. That marzipan is like nothing else I’ve ever tasted. And the stollen’s dough was soft and delicious. I even froze a loaf and will include it on my family charcuterie board this Christmas Eve.

So, even though traditions are often full of old memories, I plan to make the German Christmas Stollen a new one for our family!

What about you? Do you have a new Christmas tradition you’d like to start?

Debra Torres is offering one copy of An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn and one bar of Christmas Swirl homemade soap (made by the author) to one of my readers! (US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.) This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower’s giveaway policies which can be found here. Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

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What about you? What makes you want to read An Amish Christmas at the Apple Blossom Inn by Debra Torres & Tracy Fredrychowski?