ARE YOU LISTENING? WINTER STREET: A REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S" 
ARE YOU LISTENING? DAY"  
I AM EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE TODAY'S  
AUDIO BOOK CHOICE.....

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GIVEAWAY ENDED
WINTER STREET

Read by Erin Bennett
BY ELIN HILDERBRAND

ABOUT THE AUDIO BOOK:
In bestseller Elin Hilderbrand's first Christmas novel, a family gathers on Nantucket for a holiday filled with surprises.

Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket's Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four, all of them grown and living in varying states of disarray. Patrick, the eldest, is a hedge fund manager with a guilty conscience. Kevin, a bartender, is secretly sleeping with a French housekeeper named Isabelle. Ava, a school teacher, is finally dating the perfect guy but can't get him to commit. And Bart, the youngest and only child of Kelley's second marriage to Mitzi, has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines. 

As Christmas approaches, Kelley is looking forward to getting the family together for some quality time at the inn. But when he walks in on Mitzi kissing Santa Claus (or the guy who's playing Santa at the inn's annual party), utter chaos descends. With the three older children each reeling in their own dramas and Bart unreachable in Afghanistan, it might be up to Kelley's ex-wife, nightly news anchor Margaret Quinn, to save Christmas at the Winter Street Inn.

Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, a small house fire, many shots of whiskey, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling, in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elin Hilderbrand made a paper angel ornament in third grade that is still in her family's custody. She celebrates the holidays by making batches of homemade mustard and chive pine nut dip and gifting them to her lucky friends. Her favorite carol is "O Holy Night." Winter Street is her fourteenth novel. The following rumors about Elin Hilderbrand are true: She writes her novels longhand, she is a good cook and a terrible gardener, and she is fighting breast cancer. Everything else is up for speculation. THE RUMOR is her 15th novel. 

SOME OTHER BOOKS BY ELIN HILDERBRAND:

                   

                  

                    

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW:
Best selling author Elin Hilderbrand’s WINTER STREET is a delightful holiday novel that is just the gift readers should give themselves, and each other. WINTER STREET is Hilderbrand’s first Christmas novel and takes place in Nantucket, a favorite setting of hers. It is there that readers meet the Quinn family and are quickly caught up in the lives of this loving, compassionate, but also wacky family that just might resemble people readers really know. Each character is fully realized thanks to Hilderbrand’s expertise, thus drawing readers quickly in to all of their lives. I thought I really knew these people, and that kept me turning pages/listening. I hated for the story to end. 

WINTER STREET is the name of a charming inn that the Quinn family has run for years. With father Kelley and stepmother Mitzi currently in charge, we are drawn in as Christmas approaches to see if all the children will come home for the annual festivities. Hilderbrand writes about each integral protagonist with great detail so we quickly begin to understand what makes them tick and what part they play in the Quinn family.

Learning about what Kelley is like and how he and Mitzi got together calls for his first wife, and the “children’s” mother, to also be introduced. Margaret Quinn is a celebrity as she deals with her job as news anchor for CBS. Her career is very important to her, keeping her busy with travel and it is the reason her relationship with Kelley ended. She does, however, love her children very much and we see how each of these now grown children feels about her. Because of her schedule, it was mutually decided that Kelley would have custody of Patrick, Kevin, and Ava. While Margaret doesn’t remarry, Kelley does and so Mitzi enters the picture and we find out just why she is often known to be rather ditzy. She and Kelley have a son together, Bart, who just isn’t much of an academic but rather a party boy. Bart winds up enlisting in the Marines after high school, and is deployed to Afghanistan.

Patrick is the eldest of the Quinn offspring and is married with three boys. He is the golden child and someone it is hard to live up to if you are a younger siblings. However, Patrick shows he also isn’t perfect and arrives for Christmas minus his family thanks to the trouble he finds himself in. Siblings Kevin and Ava both still live at the inn but have their jobs and own lives. Once divorced, Kevin swears off women but finds new love that he falls hard for and is trying to keep this secret from the rest of the family. As the youngest, Ava seems to be the most balanced and is a schoolteacher who is trying to keep her own relationship of two years alive. 

As Christmas nears, the annual Christmas Eve party at the Inn is almost here and the whole island looks forward to it. Everyone who is supposed to help with this yearly event, however, seems to be coming apart at the wrong time! Just as quickly as a wobbly Christmas tree can fall over and ruin a holiday, so does the Quinn family start to fall apart. Each one of them plays off the other and as one problem seems solved, another one arises. This is where the family really must pull together or each of their lives will never be the same. 

I have to say that I loved all the characters including the ones I disliked, if you know what I mean. If Erin Hilderbrand could grant me a holiday wish, it would be to make the Quinn family return each Christmas so we can have their delightful story continue. A fast read because I personally didn’t want to stop listening and hope those of you lucky enough to get your hands on a copy will enjoy this holiday treat as much as I did.

GIVEAWAY

 THANKS TO MITCH AND THE FINE FOLKS AT

HACHETTE AUDIO, I HAVE ONE COPY

OF THIS WONDERFUL AUDIO BOOK TO 

GIVE AWAY TO ONE LUCKY WINNER!

  

--U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES, PLEASE
--INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
--ALL ENTRIES/COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE IN ORDER TO COUNT 
AS MORE THAN ONE ENTRY

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FOUND INTERESTING ABOUT WINTER STREET THAT WOULD MAKE YOU WANT TO WIN THIS AUDIO BOOK

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND LEAVE A LINK I CAN FOLLOW IN THE ENTRY

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FIND INTERESTING ON ELIN HILDERBRAND'S WEBSITE BY GOING HERE

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE OTHER CURRENT GIVEAWAY YOU HAVE ENTERED ON MY BLOG. IF YOU ENTERED MORE THAN ONE, YOU CAN COMMENT ON EACH ON SEPARATELY AND GAIN MORE ENTRIES THAT WAY

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE WAY YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG. IF YOU FOLLOW MORE THAN ONE WAY, YOU CAN COMMENT SEPARATELY AND EACH WILL COUNT AS AN ENTRY

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT

 6 PM, EST, DECEMBER 20

GOOD LUCK!