Christmas in the Mountains

By: Rachel Coffey

Narrated by: E. Montoya, Rachel Dane

Several years after moving to San Francisco for a fresh start, home interior designer Noelle Clark returns to her hometown of Silverwood Falls for the holidays. While there, she runs into her old high school flame, Nicholas Richards, the man who broke her heart and sent her fleeing to the west coast. Feelings Noelle had long since repressed are rekindled, and she finds herself falling in love with Nicholas all over again. Could this Christmas bring tidings of joy for Noelle, or will she be left heartbroken a second time?

©2021 Rachel Coffey (P)2025 Rachel Coffey

Sweet Christmas novella

Second chance
Christmas novella
3rd person POV

Duet narration - Rachel Dane & E. Montoya
Love these two together! Such great narration.

This is a fast paced cute Christmas time novella. High school sweethearts reunited and get a second chance. Hallmark movie feels.

Cute, sweet, and easy quick listen

Not what I was hoping for

Spoilers
Take this review with a grain of salt since I’m annoyed. I woke early on Christmas and wanted something warm and a little spicy and I got was a bland closed door romance with poor pacing, glaring inconsistencies and next to no plot.
Noel returns to her hometown in the mountains of Tennessee for Christmas from San Francisco where she has been living for 10 years. She runs into the high school boyfriend Nicholas who broke her heart when they couldn’t make a long distance relationship work. They reconnect, are immediately back in love, he proposes and agrees to move with her back to California, even through their reunion seems to consist primarily of eating in silence and falling asleep on the couch when there are two perfectly good bedrooms.
The writing here feels amateurish and could have really used a decent editor to help with all the inconsistency and bad pacing. Several times the college Nick went to in Boston is referred to Northwestern (which is in Chicago) not Northeastern. Noel comments on the cool Texas air even though they are in Tennessee. But the bigger picture is that Noel blames Nick for breaking her heart by deciding to go to school in Boston when she was already planning to go to school in California. Not sure how that makes everything his fault. Plus she reveals that she hasn’t dated since they broke up making hers a 28 yr old woman with very little relationship maturity. Probably the most unrealistic part of the book is that they find Nick a job and affordable apartment in San Francisco in one afternoon, taking this story into the realm of fairytale.