Christmas Wishes Review: JustRead Blog Tour

Christmas Wishes Review: JustRead Blog Tour

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Christmas Wishes by Carmen Peone, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Christmas Wishes
Series: Seven Tine Ranch Romance
Author: Carmen Peone
Publisher: Iron Stream Media
Release Date: December 2, 2025
Genre: Inspirational Contemporary Western Romance

One dream wedding. Two uncertain futures. A season of decisions that could change everything….

At Seven Tine Guest Ranch, Mandie Sellars serves guests as a cook, but her aspiration is to be the ranch’s event planner. When a surprise Christmas Eve wedding lands in her lap, Mandie sees this as her chance to shine—if she can handle the pressure.

Her fiancé, Hudson Piccolo, just took the call of his his dream legal job. There’s just one catch—the job is in Seattle, clear across the state. Accepting it means leaving the ranch and upending Mandie’s and her daughter’s lives.

Can their love withstand the tension between their ambitions and their commitment?

MY CHRISTMAS WISHES REVIEW

I love Christmas stories. And this one combines Christmas with weddings and beautiful decorations. The cover is inviting, and the story is one of trusting God and choosing love. Though we don’t see her in the story a lot, the main character has a daughter who plays an important role in shaping Mandie’s ideas of what her life should be like. And she’s found a man who not only wants to love her but also be a father to her little girl. However, the life he was raised in is very different from theirs. These provide the main conflict for the story.

The conflict is a very realistic one. Differences in life goals provide bumps in the road for many couples in love. Add to this the stress of both parties in trying to find the path God has for their professional lives and the stresses of days gone wrong, and you’ve got a lot these two characters must work through.

This is the fourth in a series, which I haven’t read. Though you don’t have to read the others to understand this one, there are references to things that happened in previous stories. I feel like as a reader you will enjoy the story more and connect with it in a deeper way if you take the time to read the others first.

While the characters were likable and grounded in their motivations, I did feel at times both came back to their default thinking without delving deeper into the why’s even after determining to let God lead. “But I want this because of that”, where the want and motivation remained surface level, seemed to be a repeated idea for both and it left me feeling like they both needed to mature a little bit. I do like the fact that the author allowed both characters to struggle with their decisions to trust God, because this is true to life.

The other thing I really enjoyed about this book is the way it includes and revolves around Native people. Other than historical fiction, I’ve not read a lot of stories that involve Native people either on or off reservations. I think this may be the first one, but I’d love to find more.

I give Christmas Wishes three and a half stars raised to four because there were a few things I wasn’t as happy with, but overall it was a good story I’d recommend for an easy Christmas read. And I can’t help thinking that if I’d read the others first, I might have been more connected to the story.

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Iron Stream Media | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | BookBub

More in This Series

About the Author

Carmen Peone is an award-winning author of Young Adult and Inspirational Western Romantic Suspense. With the love of history and the Western woman’s lifestyle, she weaves healing, hope, and horses into her stories. With a thread of romance. She lives with her husband in Northeast Washington on the Colville Confederated Indian Reservation.

Connect with Carmen by visiting carmenpeone.com to follow her on social media and subscribe to email updates.

Tour Giveaway

(1) winner will receive a signed copy of Christmas Wishes and some other Christmas-related goodies!

(3) additional winners will each receive a signed copy of Christmas Wishes!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight December 8, 2025 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on December 15, 2025. Winners will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!