Review: Just Okay
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 28, 2013
This novella was just okay. I don't feel like I was terribly drawn into the story.The entire story spans eight Christmas Eves over more than a decade. It was hard to get to know the characters when you're stuck skipping around so much. I felt like the jumping around really made the story disjointed. A few of the scenes didn't really seem to be necessary, or maybe they could have been added together to limit the number of different time periods.Cyrus was an okay hero. There wasn't much about him that I particularly liked or that really stood out to me. He obviously struggled with acceptance from his father, but it wasn't mentioned much. And then it was just all solved with a few words from Helen. There were mentions of his being a bit of a playboy, but it was essentially just hearsay because we never actually see his life outside of Christmas Even every other year or so.Helen, as a heroine, was also just okay. She grows up throughout the story and I didn't really find her growing into an interesting character at all. A lot of it was just because she was a teenager for so much of it. But again, there wasn't a chance to really witness much character development because we were only told about the development instead of actually seeing it happen. I didn't really understand why she was so in love with him, either. There was nothing remarkable about either of them.Despite being disjointed, the general idea was still there. It's still a fairly entertaining holiday read.