Dear Santa - Debbie Macomber

Dear Santa by Debbie Macomber
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've long wanted to read a Debbie Macomber book. This might not have been a great choice for my first. Or perhaps I'm just not the right reader for her books.

In Dear Santa, Lindy returns home for the holidays after a rough year on both a personal and a career front. After reviewing letters she wrote to Santa as a child, she decides to write another letter to Santa this year. Will this this new letter be answered in the same ways her childhood letters were?

I think that I just wasn't in the mood for the sacchrine sweetness of this book. So I think my rating and review are probably more a refleciton of me at the time and not necessarily the book. However, the book itself had issues with inconsistencies and a lot of redundant information (sometimes even the exact phrasing). The pacing of the story overall was off - weird time jumps and other parts that dragged. Hopefully some of these things were taken care of in a final edit (I was reading an advanced review copy).

I wanted to like Lindy, and maybe I did. She just wasn't as fully developed as I would have liked. None of the characters were, but I at least hoped to have a more complete main character. The romance part was okay. Quick but understandable.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an advanced copy to read and review. All opinions are my own.

View all my reviews

Seven Days of Us - Francesca Hornak

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The Birch family is having to spend the Christmas holiday under quarantine at their country estate due to their oldest daughter’s medical career. For those seven days, they bump up each other and their various personalities and idiosyncrasies. Is a happy holiday had?
I am striking out on Christmas books this season. I found nothing to like about this book other than short chapters, that were easy to read.
I didn’t like or appreciate or care about any of the characters. Perhaps that was the point, and I missed it? They were just all so dysfunctional and self-absorbed. Every.Last.Character.
The “coincidences” where just a bit much. Seriously. Were the 6 main characters the only people on the planet to continue running into each other like that? The “surprises” weren’t surprising at all but could be spotted chapters in advance.
The plot and story telling were ponderous in the minutiae.
Summed up: I just really didn’t care.
That being said, other people in my book club (it was our December choice), enjoyed it. So perhaps it’s just me.
If you would like to read more of my reviews, please visit mommyreadsbooks.blogspot.com


View all my reviews

Home in Time for Christmas - Heather Graham

Synopsis from B&N: Centuries ago, by a scaffold in Manhattan, rose petals drifted gently to the ground like snow on a wintry Massachusetts night. Melody Tarleton is driving home for Christmas when a man—clad in Revolutionary War-era costume—appears out of nowhere, right in the path of her car. Shaken, she takes the injured stranger in, listening with concern to Jake Mallory’s fantastic claim that he’s a Patriot soldier, sentenced to death by British authorities. The last thing he remembers is the tug of the noose.



Safe at her parents’ house, Melody concocts a story to explain the handsome holiday guest with the courtly manners, strange clothes and nasty bump on the head. Mark, her close friend who wishes he were more, is skeptical and her family is fascinated—though not half so fascinated as Melody herself. Jake is passionate, charming and utterly unlike anyone she’s ever met. Can he really be who he claims? And can a man from the distant past be the future she truly longs for?

Thanks, Rhonda, for the book recommendation! It was just what I needed to kick off my Christmas break.

While I will say the book was predictable and there were a few curse words sprinkled throughout, that gets all of the negative out of the way. I enjoyed the story and the characters. They were all kind of quirky but definitely in a good way. I still didn’t like Mark at the end, but that’s okay. The rest of them made up for it.

I liked the elements of time travel and the contrast of how values have changed.

Definitely a good, light read – fit for the season.