I started reading this story because my husband's aunt lives in Beaufort, is a military widow, and has 3 grown daughters. Well, the resemblance ends there. I did not like the characters in this book. They were so unlikable.

The story is told from the point of view of the mom and two of the sisters. Not sure why the third (unlikable) sister didn't get her fair share with a chance to speak. The uncle is okay. Middle sister is a piece of work.

I struggled to get through this. My impression of southern people after reading this is that they are nosy busy bodies who are polite to your face and back stab you later. I'm not saying they are, I'm saying the people in this book are not good people. Be curious to see what Mike's aunt would think of this book. ( )

I have no idea why I picked this book up. I shouldn't have. ( )

Josie Tatternal is a people pleaser. A widow, she runs a bed and breakfast in the large old home she insisted her husband buy when he retired from the military. After all those years of moving constantly she wanted roots, and the place next to her sister’s home was for sale. But the home she envisioned didn’t quite come to fruition. Her husband descended into alcoholism and died. Her three daughters grew up and left – only the middle child, Lila, is living nearby with her husband and children. So now Josie entertains paying guests at her bed and breakfast to gain enough income to keep the place. A friend’s heart attack makes her long for more closeness with her girls, so she invites all of them home for Christmas. The resulting stew of repressed emotions, long-held grudges, sibling rivalry and disappointments held over for decades boils over on Christmas Eve.

There’s some good material here. Battle has given us a family dynamic ripe for dissection. There are so many conflicts and potential land mines that the reader begins to feel somewhat unsettled. But at the center there is Josie –smoothing the way, building bridges, or at least trying to, and giving every appearance of being capable and calm. Frankly I think the plot got away from Battle. She went in so many directions that none of the subplots was fully developed. The final chapter feels anticlimactic, and I’m left feeling dissatisfied.
( )

In Beaufort, South Carolina, Josephine Tatternall - a military widow turned Bed and Breakfast proprietor - is playing bridge with four friends when she witnesses her best friend Peatsy's narrow brush with death. As everyone else around her sits frozen in shock, Josie retains the presence of mind to calmly yet quickly call for an ambulance. As Peatsy is rushed off to hospital, Josie further recalls that she had even wished the young lady who was the emergency dispatcher a very merry Christmas before she hung up the phone.

With Christmas just around the corner, Josie continues to ponder the strange feeling of calmness she felt in the midst of Peatsy's medical crisis. She comes to the conclusion that life is too short to hold grudges; and that to continue to let such grievances stand in the way of your family togetherness is detrimental. Josie determines that in the end, family means everything. This year, Josie resolves to invite her three grown daughters - the girls she raised so carefully, yet with such mixed results - back home for the holidays.

With her own special brand of Southern charm and a sharp-eyed wit, Lois Battle delivers her most entertaining and emotional novel to date. Skillfully employing an uncanny ear for Southern sensibility, the author masterfully paints a family portrait that is tender, poignant and yet gloriously flawed. Family secrets, old misunderstandings, and unspoken loyalties are played out amidst the heightened expectations of the Christmas season - which guarantees joy and tears alike. The upstairs/downstairs comedies of a Southern inn make a perfect backdrop for this portrait of a family in all its tender, touching, and flawed glory and a love story that comes as suddenly as sunshine after the rain.

I must say that I absolutely loved this book. In my opinion, it was a brilliantly written and poignant story - written with such tenderness and honesty that I could immediately relate to each of the characters. There was such a tremendous sense of empathy and understanding for this family's plight that shone throughout this story, that Lois Battle is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I would give this book a definite A+! and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. ( )

Josie Tatternall’s husband, Bear, was a career military man. The Tatternalls had three daughters – Camilla, Lila and Evie – but Bear was gone so much, Josie basically raised them by herself. Josie always longed for some stability, so when Bear retired, she insisted on buying her dream home. When Josie is widowed, she is forced to turn her home into a Bed and Breakfast to make ends meet.

Josie is a wonderful hostess, so her business is a success. She has good friends, but her relationship with her grown daughters is strained. Camilla is in New York and hasn’t been home in ten years, Lila does touch base from time to time out of a sense of duty and Evie writes a column for the paper that shares all the details of her private life.

When the family gets together for Christmas, tensions come to a head. Lila does something she could live to regret, Evie becomes a little too friendly with Lila’s father-in-law, and Camilla leaves in a huff because of something Lila does. Will the Tatternalls ever mend fences and learn to get along?

Bed and Breakfast by Lois Battle is the story of the dysfunctional Tatternall family. The story is character driven and I wasn’t crazy about most of the characters, so the book was just okay for me. Camilla, Lila and Evie seemed so selfish and self-absorbed to me – I just wanted to shake them and tell them to grow up already! Maybe that was the point of the story, but I found it frustrating. Nothing was revealed in the story to justify the way these women acted toward their family – I just didn’t get it. Maybe I live in a dream world, but the members of my family don’t act like that. There were also quite a few typos in this book, which I found distracting. ( )