Review: Cute, but the author tried too hard
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 25, 2013
Fun story overall and good, solid writing. I knew it was a YA novel, but the sarcasm of the main character was over-the-top in my opinion, as though the author was trying a bit too hard. I enjoyed the evolving relationships shared between Holly and various relatives and others in her life; however, the compulsion for authors to portray the broken home scenario--even in a short Christmas novella--personally disgruntled me slightly. I'm also not a huge fan of first person and there were a number of distracting typos. All in all, I suppose I should stick to reading romance between older, more mature characters. I must mention one last thing, but it is an important one for this reader. The use of a certain off-color slang term early on (for a loose woman) has no place in Christian fiction, in my personal opinion. Quite frankly, it was a shock seeing it in a book from this particular publisher. That alone knocked the rating down one point for this reader.