Tuesday Intros/Teaser Tuesday - Rosie Blake's How To Stuff Up Christmas

I'm 65% into book 15 of my 20 (or so) Books of Summer and I'm absolutely loving it and can already say that I highly recommend it. It's Rosie Blake's How To Stuff Up Christmas which may seem an odd choice for July but since there never seems enough time between Thanksgiving and New Years to read all of the holiday books I want to, I'm doing a Christmas in July this year. I'm also linking up for the first time to Bibliophile By The Sea's "First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" along with my usual "Teaser Tuesday" at Books and a Beat. This book is good enough to be teased twice! Actually, it's good enough to be teased a lot more than that but I'm trying to behave and not go too over-the-top.

The Amazon Description does a decent job of giving the basic gist of the tale:

Christmas and cooking collide in this hilarious romantic comedy from Rosie Blake. 'Tis the season to be jolly. Unless you've found an intimate picture of another woman on your fiance's phone . . . Eve is heartbroken after discovering her fiance is cheating on her. Being surrounded by the joys of Christmas is more than Eve can bear, so she chooses to avoid the festivities by spending Christmas alone on a houseboat in Pangbourne. Eve gets gets an unexpected seasonal surprise when handsome local vet Greg comes to her rescue one day, and continues to visit Eve's boat on a mission to transform her from Kitchen Disaster Zone to Culinary Queen. But where does Greg keep disappearing to? What does Eve's best friend Daisy know that she isn't telling? And why is there an angry goose stalking Eve's boat? A hilarious and heart-warming novel about Christmas, catastrophes, and cooking, containing exclusive Christmas recipes, from the talented Rosie Blake.

I love that it mentions the angry goose ... but it left out Eve's whacktastic family, the crazy dog that her ex-fiance is trying to reclaim, Greg's brother, and a whole slew of other delightful characters I've loved getting to know. Ah well. Guess a description can't really cover everything, huh?

So, on with the teases. They might not really tell you more of the story, but maybe you'll find your interest piqued enough to want to give the book a try!

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is supposed to be the first paragraph (or two) of a book being read now or in the future. Of course, the beginning of this book isn't your standard paragraph so I just went with the first screen shot. I know. My first time linking up and I'm already bending the rules. Whoops.

"Teaser Tuesday" asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read. Again, I tend to be a bit flexible with the "line or two." I've bookmarked and highlighted a ton of selections that all seem more than worthy of a good share and tease, but have had a hard time narrowing it down so I'm just going with the most recent highlight from the 63% mark.

If you enjoy the Christmas season, good recipes, belly laughs, "awwww" moments, and the occasional desire to smack a character in the face with a muddy boot, then How To Stuff Up Christmas might very well be right up your tinsle-covered alley.

What do you think?