A Courtship Christmas by Shelley Shepard Gray

 Title:  A Courtship Christmas

Author: Shelley Shepard Gray

Narrated by:  Tavia Gilbert

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 7 hours and 22 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank-you!

 Atle Petersheim has a crush on widow Sadie Mast.  He is a quiet man that loves his work as a carpenter.  He is not sure how to go about courting Sadie.  She hires him to make a new room for her oldest son, Cale.  Cale has a crush of his own on his employers’ daughter, Hope.  Atle asks the bookmobile librarian, Sarah Anne, for help on how to court Sadie.  Instead of a self-help book, she loans him a modern romance in which she believes he will find inspiration.  Atle is embarrassed, but he does find inspiration in the book.  Will Atle be able to work up the courage to ask Sadie to court him?  After a disastrous first date with Hope, will Cale be able to win back her and her parents’ approval?

 I loved this audiobook.  It was a sweet clean Amish romance.  I really liked how there was a quote from Atle’s romance novel at the start of each chapter.  I felt vested in that story as well.  I loved both the forty something and teenage romances in this novel.  This is the third book in the series, but I haven’t read the rest of the series and I felt it worked well as a standalone. 

 I really enjoyed the characters.  Atle was a good man, but socially awkward.  Sadie’s first husband was verbally and physically abusive to her and her three children.  They are trying to figure out how to make it and move forward since his death.  Cale is a good boy, but at sixteen, he feels like he has to be the man of the house since his father’s death.  He wonders if he’ll be able to have his own life.  Hope has always felt like she was not as good as her older sister and self-conscious about her weight.  I like how through the novel she learns how to stand up for herself.

 I loved the thoughtful Christmas gifts in the novel, and I really liked the narrator.  This was a very enjoyable Christmas audiobook that would be enjoyable any time of year.