Meet Me in London and Lost December

 Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo

Not one of the better Christmas books I've read, so I won't say much. It's the story of a fashion designer who agrees to a temporary fake engagement with a stranger willing to show her designs in his new department store. It's meant to be a Christmas book but it's not very Christmassy. It's pretty much all about their physical attraction to each other, a story better described as sexy than romantic I think. The plot had potential but there wasn't enough of it to make for a really good read. 

Lost December by Richard Paul Evans

In a modern day re-telling of the story of the prodigal son, Luke takes his trust fund and goes off with friends to do what he calls "real living", leaving his father broken hearted and without an heir for his business empire. The son gets in with the wrong crowd, blows through his money in less than a year and ends up disillusioned, broke, and homeless. Rescued by Carlos who finds him lying in a parking lot, beaten and robbed of everything but his underwear, he begins to realize how much he took for granted and how much he has lost. Carlos gives him a place to stay at the care home he runs, feeds and clothes him, and puts him to work helping care for the residents. Too ashamed to face his father, he takes an entry level job at one of his father's business outlets, grateful now for even a small income that will provide him with food and clothes. When Luke abandoned his father and the business, his father had suffered a major heart attack, forcing him to hire someone else to take over the running of the business. Soon the new guy's less than ethical policies begin to affect some of Luke's work colleagues. When a young single mother, and then his boss who is about to retire and needs his pension, are let go without reason, Luke decides to face his father and plead their cases. Will his father let him in the door, will he listen, or will he reject him?

As Christmas stories go, this one wasn't bad. There were times when things seemed to come too easily to Luke on his road to recovery and redemption, things that would be very unlikely in a real life, but the book is quite well written and uplifing in its way.