Celebration at Christmas Cove

Jansen (An Unexpected Amish Harvest, written as Carrie Lighte) puts readers in the Christmas spirit with this sweet if occasionally sappy romance. With an all-important Christmas Day deadline looming, travel magazine writer Celeste Bell is bumped from her flight to the Caribbean and rerouted to Sea Spray Island off the coast of Massachusetts. Her seatmate is Nathan White, a widower who runs the island’s community center at Christmas Cove—and who just learned that the center did not receive a much-needed grant. When Celeste winds up stranded on the island by a winter storm followed by a series of mishaps and cannot complete her assignment, she’s afraid both of losing her job and of spending her first real holiday season since her mother’s death without the distraction of work. Luckily, there’s a quirky cast of townsfolk on hand, led by Nathan and his daughter, Abbey, to show Celeste the spirit of Christmas as celebrated in quaint Christmas Cove, which helps her figure out a way to deliver a winning article and help Nathan save the community center—with true love as a bonus. The Hallmark overtones are a tad cloying but the story is saved by strong secondary characters. This is sure to satisfy. Agent: Pamela Hopkins, Hopkins Literary. (Oct.)