About the Book

Book: Sand & Mistletoe
Author: Chautona Havig
Genre: Contemporary Christian Romance (Holiday)
Release Date: November 24, 2018

What’s Christmas without family drama, an accident, and mistletoe?

If you ask Portia Spears, it’s a horror movie—especially since she’s never the one caught under that mistletoe. And who thought it was a good idea to spend the last Christmas as a family unit away from their family home?

Her bossy older sisters, that’s who.

Christmas at his parents’ house with his son—just the way Reese Whitaker likes it. But a chance encounter on the beach might just change everything. How often do you meet someone who loves kids and knows American Sign Language?

Not often. Trust him.

However, with just two weeks to get to know each other and two families that couldn’t be more different vying for their time, will they even have a chance to test out that mistletoe they found?

Find out today in Sand & Mistletoe.

Click here to get your copy!

My Thoughts

This is loosely based on one of Havig's family vacations. This is the story of a family spending family Christmas together in a totally different location. In this story we meet Portia who just needs a break. She feels overwhelmed by the fact that she's spending Christmas not at home and she's along with her very busy family. The drama between Portia and her sisters gets to be a bit too much and poor mom and dad don't really get a break since they are the ones trying to bring peace to everyone.

Reese and his son make this story for me. He is so gentle and sweet not only to his son but also to Portia. Their love story is sweet and even better was the relationship that Portia had with his son. The fact that she was able to communicate with him through sign language made him feel right at home with her. I loved the banter between him and his father. Portia and Reese's inner monologues were quite comical as well.

Overall I think Chautona did a great job at a sweet story. Definitely a great read over the holidays as you are surrounded by the chaos of it all. You will be able to have a little sense of what Portia was going through!

My Rating: 3.5 stars/ Very sweet, really liked it!

About the Author

Chautona Havig lives in an oxymoron, escapes into imaginary worlds that look startlingly similar to ours and writes the stories that emerge. An irrepressible optimist, Chautona sees everything through a kaleidoscope of It’s a Wonderful Life sprinkled with fairy tales. Find her at chautona.com and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.

More from Chautona

What Happens When an Author Rewrites History

To be fair, almost none of us wanted to be there.

And really, that wasn’t fair. Two of our daughters planned as a “destination Christmas” bash for the whole family—just a nice getaway in San Diego for the “last” Christmas we’d probably all be in the same place on the same days. The kids were getting older, getting married, and even moving out of state. It was a beautiful thing for them to try to do for us.

But Havigs are homebodies who like their traditions, and most of us left in Ridgecrest weren’t too thrilled being “dragged” four hours south to celebrate Christmas in a beautiful house on a cliff overlooking the San Diego countryside. It had everything, game room, lots of space, yards, hiking trails, an infinity pool, a hot tub…

Yeah. That hot tub kicked off the weekend with a splash all right. With no lighting around it, and no railing either, my husband stepped out of it and right off the ledge—down a hill (at least fifteen feet), bouncing off boulders and thankfully, stopped by a fence. Otherwise, he’d have rolled for a LONG way.

Get this. He broke nothing. Don’t even ask me how (because we all know Who took care of that, right?).

Still, I spent my Christmas Eve sitting in an ER waiting for someone to tell us the damage (superficial scrapes and deep bruising). The whole time I thought, “This has got to be a book.”

Two years later, it was.

I say this at the end of the book, but I need to say it again.

People who know our family will recognize some of my kids (I left four of them out of the story). They will also say, “Wait, she’s not like that!”

And that’s the point. I put just enough of real people in it to really capture the feel of the personalities, meshed some quirks (including the ones that got left out), and then set them in a stressful situation and really way over-exaggerated actual responses. I want to say this here again. None of us acted just like I portrayed us in Sand & Mistletoe (although, frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed a couple of them if they’d wanted to). Unlike A Bird Died, I didn’t even try to stick to facts.

Instead of San Diego hill country, I put us at my favorite beach—Ventura. I stuck our rented beach house where the Pierpont Inn is/used to be (don’t even know if it exists anymore). Reese’s parents live in the house I lived in when I was nine—right there on Pierpont just a block from the beach. And where they went to get mistletoe… one of my favorite places in the world.

So, here’s my version of the tale—the one I wrote instead of told. Just like Francie Nolan learned from her teacher in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. When I tell the story, I tell it exactly how it happened. However… I wrote what should (not) have happened! (this is much more interesting than the real story).