I'm a sucker for a Christmas romance and this December I've decided to take a deep (deeeeep) dive into my Kindle and read the oldest books I could find languishing there with "Christmas" in the title. So far this plan has been a success, given that the first book I unearthed was the 2017 gem, The Billionaire's Christmas Baby by Marion Lennox. If the mountain of Christmas romances in my TBR are half this good - well, I'll be a fortunate reader indeed.

Max Grayland is a nice guy hiding under a loner exterior. He's also very rich. The kind of hotel guest that causes staff to say "how high" when he says jump. He's a savvy businessman determined to right the ship at his father's company and undo all the shady environmental deals Dear Old Dad wrought over the years. He's smart and capable. What he can't do? Deal with a tiny infant unceremoniously dumped in his lap by his father's much younger, social climbing mistress. Daddy Dearest promised her a big pay day if she could get pregnant with another heir so he could disinherit Max - of course a male heir (I mean, do you even have to ask?). Well Phoebe came out a girl and Daddy Dearest up and died before changing his will. Max inherits it all, the scheming mistress gets diddly squat, which means she has no use or time for a baby. Here she is Max, Phoebe is your problem now.

In this Sydney hotel room witnessing Max's dilemma is hotel maid, Sunny Raye (yes, that's her real name), who is naturally horrified by the entire spectacle. Max, who seems cold, indifferent and completely out of his depth. The child's vile mother. And there's Phoebe, a tiny defenseless child who asked for none of this bullshit. It's Christmas Eve, Sunny has worked a double-shift (she needs the money) and she just realized she forgot to buy her Gran's favorite cherry cordials. She doesn't have time for this. But Max takes one look at how she handles his screaming half-sister and before you can say cherry cordials, she's spending the night in the suite to help with Phoebe.

Max is out of his depth. He's only in Sydney for his father's memorial service and when Phoebe storms into his life he's struggling to write a eulogy for a man he had an extremely complicated relationship with (I mean, if you can call it "a relationship"). Anyway, one thing leads to another, because of course. Max begs Sunny to stay and help him while he's in Sydney. She agrees, on one condition. She's not missing Christmas with her grandparents and four siblings. Max is coming home for the holidays, Phoebe in tow. And what Max learns, very quickly, is that Sunny is aptly named. Sunny is the glue. She kept her younger siblings together while her mother battled drug addiction. When Mom died, they were saved from being split up in foster care by the appearance of their grandparents (who they never knew existed). Still, Sunny was a young teenager. Yeah, Gran and Pa were there - but she raised her siblings up to that point, so she didn't stop. They got an education, Sunny didn't finish school. She works hard and dreams big. And here comes this billionaire into her life like some sort of Prince Charming. Prince Charming who thinks he can throw money at any problem. Prince Charming who doesn't understand or really know what love and family mean.

And that's the crux of our story. Sunny with her love of family and Max who grew up with the silver spoon but nothing else outside of material possessions. On the surface this book easily could have fallen down the Cinderella rabbit hole, and certainly it would have been a fine read. What makes this story work though is Sunny. She sacrifices for her family but doesn't truly see it that way. Certainly there were times when I wanted her to run away, be selfish, live her best life, but that would break her heart. She loves her family, they love her, and never once as the reader do you feel like Sunny is being taken advantage of. There's a dignity about her character that is very appealing and welcoming. Sunny is all about dignity, even as she's scrubbing a carpet stain in Max's hotel room suite as the story opens.

What I liked about Max is that while he's clueless is many ways, he's not a bad guy. He's, in fact, a pretty nice guy. He just doesn't "get it." He's completely ill-prepared for the arrival of an infant and for his attraction to Sunny that's more than just sexual chemistry. But even as he recognizes his feelings, even has he professes those feelings to Sunny, this poor sap still doesn't get it. The last couple of chapters of their going their separate ways, then coming back together are really well done.

This did lose a little steam for me in the second half, but it's pretty much everything I want in a holiday romance. It's warm, it's cozy, I really, really liked Max and Sunny - as individuals and as a couple - and the baby serves as a nice dose of relatable conflict (not everybody would be comfortable dealing with an infant that just suddenly fell into their lap!). This story is tailor-made for a Hallmark movie adaptation, right down to the trip to New York City that happens midway through. If you're looking for something cozy and heartwarming to read by the fire this holiday season? Look no further.

Final Grade = B+

DNF. I am so sad that I had to DNF this novel at 80% of the way through as it had such a unique beginning and Sunny is such a strong, brave character. BUT Sunny's wish-washiness did me in ... and Max wasn't any better. I just couldn't put up with how they didn't deal with their personal issues OR how Max just assumed that his "goals" for their future would work out "just because" ... GAH!!!

Review By: From Me to You ... Video, Photography, & Book Reviews

Read more of this review and a TEASER here: https://frommetoyouvideophoto.blogspot.com/2019/10/spreading-word-billionaires-christmas.html

This is so reminiscent of Harlequin stories from the 60’s and 70’s I was hooked on the blurb. Sunny, a maid at a high class hotel in Australia is roped into helping Max with his infant baby sister. He’s in the country from New York City for his fathers funeral. A beautiful story of love and respect. I received a copy of this arc in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A wonderfully uplifting read that will touch your heart and make you smile from start to finish, The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby is another winner by multi award-winning author and reader favourite Marion Lennox!

The burden of responsibility has been lying heavily on Sunny Raye’s shoulders for so long, she cannot imagine herself not weighed down with duties and obligations. Not only is she the sole carer for her aged grandparents and her siblings, but she also works every hour God sends as a maid at one of Sydney’s most luxurious hotels. With Christmas just around the corner, Sunny’s plate is even more overloaded than usual, however, little did she realise when she walked into Max Grayland’s opulent suite that her life was going to be turned upside down – thanks to a drop dead gorgeous billionaire and an adorable baby girl!

Having returned from New York for his father’s funeral, Max is not exactly in the best of moods. His relationship with his father had been difficult at the best of times and having to give a eulogy to a man he had conflicted feelings about in front of Australia’s business community was never going to be easy – however, it is made ten times worse when his father’s former mistress knocks on his door and hands his infant half sister over to him! Max is more at home in the boardroom than in the nursery. He does not know the first thing about babies and needs help and as luck would have it, the hotel maid is a dab hand at looking after children. Hiring Sunny as a temporary nanny seems the most logical and sensible of solutions, however, Max never imagined that his new employee would end up awakening feelings deep within him which he had thought long buried.

Sunny knows that this is a temporary arrangement and that she will be scrubbing floors again in no time. Yet, the more time she spends with Max and Phoebe, the more she begins to wish that this agreement could be more permanent. As she starts to realise that beneath the designer suit and uptight demanour lies a man capable of great love, Sunny begins to fall for her employer, but as they are from different worlds, she is well aware that she should curtail her romantic fantasies and focus on the job at hand – until she shares a passionate kiss with Max!

Will a Christmas miracle give Max and Sunny the happiness which they’ve been searching for all along? Or are some things simply not meant to be?

Marion Lennox is my go-to author for charming, funny, enjoyable and heartwarming romances and she is on top form with The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby! An absolute virtuoso when it comes to juggling light and shade, Marion Lennox couldn’t let her readers down if she tried and in The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby, she has penned a compelling, touching and spellbinding tale of second chances, new beginnings and redemption that I absolutely adored.

An exceptional tale from one of the best writers in the business, The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby is romantic fiction at its absolute best!

Max Grayland has inherited his baby half sister just in time for Christmas. His father has died and his step mother has abandoned her baby daughter once she found out that she would only receive financial support if she had a boy, She leaves the baby in the hotel suite, which is where Sunny Rae, the hotel maid, finds her. Max asks/demands that she should help him over Christmas whilst he sorts out child care. She agrees, so long as they spend the festive period with her family. Sunny thought love solved everything whilst for Max love was an anathema. He was used to taking people financially but not loving them. Max changes his view as realises he, and the baby, need/love Sunny.

This is a slow burn romance. It is enjoyable but drawn out in places.

I received this book via Netgalley and Harlequin Romance in exchange for an honest review,

Sunny's been taking care of her family for a long time. She works hard to make sure they're all clothed, fed and healthy. However, while she's cleaning a room the Billionaire in it is interrupted by his step mother, who has a baby in tow- one that she doesn't want. Stuck, he forces Sunny to stay and take care of his little sister. But when he realizes what a good deal she is in helping him he hatches a plan to take her back with him to New York.

This novel is the epitome of sweet. I absolutely loved Sunny- She's warm, dedicated and like her name says: Sunny. I love how Max is so surprised by her knowledge and so taken back by how she's managed to change him for the better. A wonderful and heartwarming Christmas story.

The Billionaire's Christmas Baby
by Marion Lennox

This is definitely not one of my normal favorite genre... I would of missed out on a really great read! I was caught completely from page one. What a great Cinderella story. I loved the way it is written and so realistic. I like the characters, the plot the way you are brought into it and while you are reading you go through so many emotions. Smiles, laughs, life and all of its quirks. Take a regular life mix it with a wealthy person and find out what happens. It just has so many great things going on in this book, I could not put it down. I sincerely enjoyed the story. I was given this book in return for an honest review. Anna Swedenmom

If Miss Bates could hand out book prescriptions as doctors do medicine, Marion Lennox would go on every prescription pad entitled comfort read. A Lennox romance offers a view of the world that says kindness and care are what make it better; everyone is capable of changing to be able to love; grace and consideration are virtues to look for in a mate; and the genre can be sweet, funny, tender, and true, without being saccharine. Lennox’s The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby does this by bringing a baby and unlikely hero and heroine together at Christmas. Lennox’s romance is the Cinderella-troped story of the aptly-named Sunny Raye and equally allegorically-named billionaire Max Grayland as Sunny sheds love’s light onto Max’s loveless, lonely existence. The two of them are redeemed and love made possible by the appearance of one newborn bundle of cuddly joy and screaming-like-a-banshee set of lungs baby, Phoebe.

Max is in a Sydney hotel trying to write his estranged father’s eulogy for tomorrow’s funeral when his father’s mistress, Isabelle, dumps her newborn daughter in Max’s lap. Workaholic Max is helpless before the crying, hungry, wet baby and his only recourse is hotel maid Sunny, who, it turns out, brought up four siblings with the help of her grandparents after their mother abandoned them.

Once the premise is set up, there’s not much more plot to Lennox’s romance. Max convinces Sunny to take on Phoebe’s care while he’s in Oz and Sunny, in turn, makes her care conditional on Max and Phoebe moving into her family’s ramshackle home so she may be able to make and share their Christmas. For the first time in his life, the product of a privileged but neglected childhood, Max experiences loving family life. Sunny, her Gran and Pa, and siblings Tom, Daisy, Chloe, and Sam, share a modest, but rambunctious Christmas. Max realizes that Sunny is at its centre, who gave up opportunity for schooling to work and work and work to help her grand-parents and siblings have good lives. Sunny cooks, gardens, cleans, and organizes everyone, with ne’er a thought for herself.

Max likes her, but he also needs her: to make a home for Phoebe, to act as her nanny when he returns to his businesses and takes on his father’s company. Sunny is no shrinking -violet self-sacrificer: she did what she did for love of her family. The most important thing for Max to realize is that Phoebe needs him and his love more than Phoebe needs a nanny and state-of-the-art pram. Sunny agrees to accompany him and Phoebe to New York City for a month, only to help, not to take on Phoebe’s care full-time. Max, who sees how little Sunny has ever taken for herself, wants to give her more than easy, lucrative work: he wants to give her a break. He’ll take on Phoebe, ask for Sunny’s care only when he absolutely needs it, and give Sunny time to herself, a vacation. Proximity and desire don’t allow things to turn out so neatly: Max’s emotional walls crack and Sunny’s all-too-easily-loving heart find them falling in love.

Miss Bates loved Sunny for her blunt and loving speech, no-nonsense advocacy for love and family, and calling Max out on his assumptions about poverty and privation. Miss Bates loved Max for his decency, ability to admit when he’s wrong, and awkward, gentle handling of Phoebe. Sunny and Max together, however, weren’t as convincing as most of Lennox’s couples. Sunny and Max were at their best when Sunny was calling Max out on his assumptions and Max was at his best when he was kind. Their desire and subsequent consummation of it fell flat. The novel’s last quarter devolved into a peculiar time lapse and road-to-Damascus moment for Max that Miss Bates found most unconvincing.

Though not the best of Lennox, The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby is still better than most category romance because Lennox can write sentiment without sentimental. She understands what moves good people, what makes them stay and what makes them take a chance, or a risk for love. Lennox phrases it so well. Though Sunny is tired of child-rearing, she is essentially a motherly-natured person. She wants to give Phoebe’s care over to Max but, because of a mix of identification (as an abandoned, unwanted child herself) and heightened sense of love and responsibility, Sunny is a self-admitted “sucker for a baby.” When Max makes lofty assumptions about Sunny accepting his money to nanny Phoebe, Sunny’s refusal stuns him because he thinks what he was to offer is of greater value than what Sunny does. Sunny’s vulnerable pride brings Max down a notch: ” ‘Sunny, I’m sorry,’ he said and he was. Deeply sorry. He looked at her tilted chin, her weary pride, her humiliation, and he felt a shame so deep it threatened to overwhelm him.” Lennox also reaches feelings with a light, humorous touch. When Sunny is reluctant to join Max in Manhattan, he doesn’t shame her again, he quips charmingly, but respectfully: ” ‘ … you can tell me your qualms and I can tell you the ways I’ve solved them.’ ” Lennox can very much identify what makes romance so powerful, gently pointing to its origins, with gently ironic humour, as Sunny thinks of Max and the Manhattan magic he weaves: “This was a fairy tale, she thought, in the tiny part of her mind that was available for thought. Cinders with her prince.”

Miss Bates still finds comfort and reassurance in a Lennox romance, even a moderate effort, a Lennox effort is still wonderful in many ways. The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby is “real comfort,” Emma.

Marion Lennox’s The Billionaire’s Christmas Baby is published by Harlequin Books, It was released on December 5th and may be procured from your preferred vendors. Miss Bates received an e-ARC from Harlequin, via Netgalley.

One of my favourite troupes is Cinderella and this one is a beauty it is gorgeous, so much feeling and love have been written into this one from such a great story teller in MS Lennox. I fell into this one and just about inhaled it in almost one sitting, the hero and heroine are so deserving of each other and seeing as how the hero is a billionaire then there are so many other people who are helped along their journey to a beautiful HEA.

Max Grayland is based in New York working in the family company he is not close to his father and was sent from home to home with lots of nannies growing up, he has come to Australia for his father’s funeral and finds himself the carer of a baby a little girl Phoebe his half- sister, he needs help and one of the cleaners from the hotel is in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time but either way cleaner Sunny Raye is about to have her life upended.

Sunny Raye is working at one of the top hotels in Sydney as a cleaner life has not always been a bed of roses for her she has practically bought up her younger siblings until her grandparents were found and even now everyone relies on Sunny even though she is loved by everyone, her family and love mean everything to her, so she cannot refuse to help out Mr Grayland and care for Phoebe but it ends up being longer than one night and opens up a whole new world for Sunny.

I really loved this story it is Christmas time and Max is such a giving hero even if he has so much to learn about love and family he is a real loner and well Sunny is this bright ray of sunshine who is always giving and can teach him so much and what Max does for Sunny’s family made me smile and cheer him on. I highly recommend this story it really is beautiful and if you are looking for a moving feel good Christmas story than this one is it.

The Billionaire Christmas Baby by Marion Lennox was a such sweet and addicting book to read. I mean, who wouldn’t want a hot billionaire for Christmas?!? Lennox was able to capture the Christmas spirit while bringing us a great romance as well. At the beginning of the story we get to meet Runny Raye, a hotel maid who has been working really hard to make the holidays special for her family. After being in charge of her siblings at a young age, Sunny has put her life on hold while they grew up. Now that they’re living with her grandparents, Sunny wants to make sure they all have everything they need during the holidays. But when she is asked to clean Max Grayland’s hotel suite, she never imagined that she would end up calming a baby instead. It’s when Max demanded her to stay with him during the holidays to take care of the baby that Sunny agrees, only if they spend the holidays with her family instead. As the two start to spend time with each other, the more we get to learn about their pasts and about the feelings that they’re starting to feel for each other.

Max Grayland wasn’t expecting to spend the holidays with a baby, but he is now in charge of Phoebe and he needs all the help he can get. But it is the holiday season and he can’t find anyone to help him, but when Sunny enters the room and somehow manages to calm the baby, he knows that he has the right person to him right in from of his eyes. After spending the holidays with her family, he knows that that’s exactly what he wants for Phoebe, and he will not stop at nothing to convince Sunny to give their relationship a chance.

I really enjoyed reading this story, it has a good mix of holiday spirit and a magnetic romance between the characters that will leave you wanting for more. Although Max is demanding at first, he starts to show how sweet he can be with Sunny and Phoebe. He is protective of both of them and wants to make them happy. On the other hand, Sunny is a hard working woman who has struggled to keep her little family together, and when she sees Phoebe he is immediately taken with her. There were some scenes that really had me in tears towards the end, so be prepared! The ending was perfect, it really tied everything together really well. I would highly recommend reading this story, you will not regret it! :)

***ARC provided by NetGalley, all opinions are my own.***

Max has inherited a newborn who happens to be his baby step sister after her mother abandons her to him because his father had died and had promised the woman that if she had his baby, he would take care of her financially. The Father dies and the woman learns that she had to have given birth to a BOY (she had a girl) which he never told her about, so she got nothing and therefore wants nothing to do with the baby. She gives it to Max and while he attempts to find a nanny/babysitter, he asks the maid (Sunny) who has just cleaned his room and heard the whole conversation to take care of baby Phoebe. From here in begins a beautiful story about a man with trust issues and a heroine with a bad childhood. Loved both Max & Sunny and baby Phoebe was a cutie.

It was a cute story. I didn't find the romance extremely believable. I feel like the chemistry just wasn't there for me and the timeline at the end was really strange and perhaps unnecessary. But the characters were interesting and I enjoyed reading about them.

This story was okay. Too much angst back and forth. Could have been a little more well rounded for the characters interactions

I thought this was an okay book overall.. The story was cute and it was longer than I thought it maybe should have been. The main couple had their ups and downs and it was a slow romance. I wished there was a an epilogue to see where the couple was.