Book Review: Baby, It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren

Baby, It's Cold Outside by Susan May Warren

Publisher: Summerside Press

Publish Date:October 1, 2011

Paperback, 320 pages
ISBN: 978-1609362157
Fiction, Romance, Historical, Christian, Christmas

My Review:
I love novels set in the time after World War II.  The United States is just settling back into a normal world again.  Families are healing and families are still hurting.  Some are able to move on and some aren't.  This is the way it is for Dottie, whose son died in the war.  She's stuck in a holding pattern and can't seem to move on.  But this Christmas will be different and not because she wants it to be.  No, it seems God has a different plan that involves a library worker she works with, the man next store and a man who is a complete stranger to all of them, but knows Violet better than she realizes.

Baby, It's Cold Outside is one of those wonderful heartfelt Christmas reads that is great for a cool late fall/early winter night to put you in the mood for the holiday season.  I loved getting to know each of the four main characters and the pain they carry with them and the hope each has even if it's just a tiny ray of hope.  It's a sweet story that I enjoyed watching unfold from the first page until the last page.  And I can see pulling this out from year-to-year as a Christmas read to enjoy during the season.

Ms. Warren seems to have a way with characters.  I truly felt I got to know each one of them as if I was in the house with them during the storm and I think Dottie, Violet, Jake and Gordy will stick with me for some time to come.

If you enjoy heartfelt romance and Christmas books, definitely give Baby, It's Cold Outside a Try.  Grab it, a warm blanket and curl up beside a nice warm fire one evening and you will definitely have an enjoyable evening spent in the past with four characters who will feel like old friends by the end of the book.

My Rating: 4.5/5.0


About the Book:

Hope finds the hopeless when a storm hits.

It's Christmas weekend 1949, and despite the threat of a storm, the townspeople of Frost are determined to continue their holiday traditions, if only as a means to forget the war that they had all just suffered through. But the suffering hasn't ended for Dottie Morgan who lost her only son in the war. She's preparing to wallow in her isolation for the weekend, when Violet, nearly a spinster at age 29, dares to make a request that will force Dottie to publicly revive the memory of her dead son.

When a storm traps the two women at home with a strange young man who has an unbelievable confession and a neighbor with more to do with Violet's past than she would like, no one can predict how this Christmas will give them all a second chance.

About the Author: 
Susan May Warren is an award-winning, best-selling author of over twenty-five novels, many of which have won the Inspirational Readers Choice Award, the ACFW Book of the Year award, the Rita Award, and have been Christy finalists. After serving as a missionary for eight years in Russia, Susan returned home to a small town on Minnesota’s beautiful Lake Superior shore where she, her four children, and her husband are active in their local church.

Susan's larger than life characters and layered plots have won her acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. A seasoned women’s events and retreats speaker, she’s a popular writing teacher at conferences around the nation and the author of the beginning writer’s workbook: From the Inside-Out: discover, create and publish the novel in you!. She is also the founder ofwww.MyBookTherapy.com, a story-crafting service that helps authors discover their voice.

Susan makes her home in northern Minnesota, where she is busy cheering on her two sons in football, and her daughter in local theater productions (and desperately missing her college-age son!)

A full listing of her titles, reviews and awards can be found at:www.susanmaywarren.com.

FTC Information: I received this book through Litfuse Publicity Group for an honest review.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.