Enchanting Christmas Story of Three Women at Major Crossroads in Their Lives

What a fantastic read! I read a lot, and I’ve rarely been so engaged with a book. I tend to read fast, but I do to choose some books to sip and savor. This is one of those.

The author has done an excellent job setting up a very complex story. It is told from the viewpoints of the three main women in the book: mother Maggie, older daughter Katie, and younger daughter Rosie. The whole book is kicked off when Rosie calls her mum in England from the United States, stating that she is now engaged and will be married at Christmas in Aspen. While her mother doesn’t mention her disappointment, the older woman had been planning for their big family Christmas that she does every year. We find out a little later why this is even more important to her this particular year. When older sister Katie finds out, she is determined to stop the wedding because she believes her sister is too impulsive and is making a mistake. The doubts Katie expresses in that first phone call shatter Rosie’s happiness, and now the bride-to-be is beginning to doubt herself, her relationship, and her actions. The women’s parents, Maggie and Nick, have been separated for a few months though their daughters don’t know about it. They decide, at Maggie’s insistence, that they will not let on about this development during the wedding preparation and the wedding. She doesn’t want anything to ruin her daughter’s big moment.

This setup is all done rather slowly, and we don’t learn all the details about everything for a while. Katie has her own secrets as well. It isn’t easy to see right away what has caused a rift between the parents as they seem to get along well for a couple who is divorcing.

I feel like I may have already given away too much. This is a complex tale of three women who are each at a crossroads in life, so each has her own story arc and lessons she needs to learn as the story moves forward. There are some wildly funny moments, like when the parents get off the plane in Denver, and Mum is very drunk when she meets the fiancé. She hates plane rides and drank a LOT of champagne during the flight. There are actually some emotionally gripping moments that will have you reaching for a tissue. The book kind of feels like a combination of chick lit and romance.

Now about some characters. I like Dan, the fiancé, because he just seems to be able to roll with anything that happens with his fiancée’s crazy English family. The older sister was harder to like. She is a very intense character, and even though she tries to be protective, she ends up being hurtful more often than not. I enjoyed seeing the way the relationship between Maggie and Nick—the girls’ parents—evolved during the course of the book. (I also love it when an older couple gets “screen time” in a book.) The author made what happened between them seem completely natural and fitting for their characters. I also liked watching the new relationship developing between the mothers of the couple. Both women have some trepidation on several fronts, but they soon become allies.

The story was in parts predictable, but the author made the characters so unique and individual that even if what happened was predictable, you still felt for the characters and saw it to be natural for their story. The setting of Aspen is well integrated into the story. It almost felt like another character. The author’s description painted a very vivid picture of what this city is like in the winter; I could feel the chill! I love it when a fiction book brings a little armchair travel into the picture. The fact that the story takes place around Christmas isn’t quite as well integrated as the setting, but you still get the sense that it is a Christmas story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It brought all the feels. I highly recommended it.

Books, Books, Books

Having read another book in the Snowdrop Valley series, I was a little surprised by this one. Sometimes reading books out of order can be a little confusing. I’m always intrigued by books that have an element about books in them. This book certainly had that, with a publishing house at the forefront, a woman who worked as a manuscript evaluator by day and was a writer by night, and much ado about a potential bestseller. I do have some knowledge of the publishing industry, and I definitely think there’s a fantastical element here because no new writer would have been offered such big money for a first novel. The heroine certainly created a heap of trouble for herself with the snowballing effects of her lies and cover-ups. I didn’t quite like the faux love triangle aspect of it. Mark is such a jerk, always wanting to tear the heroine down. Why she let that loser continue to have anything to do with her I can’t quite understand. Along with the romance, both the hero and the heroine had issues with their parents, too. The book did have some problems with grammar, punctuation, and usage. Comma splices seemed to be everywhere. All in all, something about this book just didn’t sit right for me; it wasn’t the feel-good Christmas story I was hoping for.

Learning More About Herself and Christmas

What an utterly charming holiday novella! I’ll admit, I had a hard time getting into it because the language seemed a little strange and simple at the beginning, but once I got used to it and got into the characters, it was fine. Holly is an efficiency expert who is hired by Santa to make things better for operations at the North Pole. She’s a very straightforward young woman who is dedicated to her job, but she has a troubled past with Christmas because of her parents. Santa has her work directly with his son Nick, who goes by Saint Nick. Holly sees him as a deadbeat, privileged son who doesn’t pull his weight. As they work together, though, things gradually change between them, but Holly nearly puts Christmas in jeopardy. In trying to right things, Holly learns more, and in a more profound way, about what Christmas truly means.

Parts of this book had me smiling because I found it fun to look at Santa’s doings as a business. Think naughty and nice reports, loading schedules, and other things like that. Nick and Holly were surprisingly well-drawn characters, and who could not love Santa? The story had more depth than I thought it was going to have. There are definitely some strange issues with grammar, punctuation, and usage. Comma splices were rife through the entire novella. Other commas were left out completely, like the required one between independent clauses joined by “and.” I do find these kinds of things distracting, especially when they are just so prevalent in a book. However, I did thoroughly enjoy this book and its look at the true meaning of Christmas and gift giving.