Review: A Nice story to get you in the holiday spirit
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 14, 2012
(3 1/2 stars) This was a cute little holiday story. Both the hero and heroine have some definite baggage. She had cancer as a child, suffered through a more recent breast cancer scare, and is now afraid to get into a relationship without having a clear bill of health first. As a result, Anna Smith has decided she's a fling-only girl for two years, at which point she should know whether or not her most recent health concerns are over. Dan Beckins lost both of his parents on Christmas when he was younger, so he's pretty much tried to out-Scrooge Scrooge ever since.I enjoyed Jeanette Murray's style of writing in this book. Her dialogue was fun and her characters were quirky. It was mostly a nice little Christmas story, but it did have a bit more going on below the surface with the two characters' problems. I found it to be a nice balance altogether.I found Dan's issues to feel a bit more "real" than Anna's--her self-imposed moratorium on dating just felt a bit extreme. Never having personally had major health issues like that, though, it could be that her reactions were indeed spot-on; but they felt slightly forced, which kind of had me rolling my eyes a bit at her continued denial of a relationship with Dan. Dan's turnaround was a bit quick, but 1) it is a novella, so space is limited and 2) it wasn't so much so that it was unbelievable, so ultimately it didn't really bother me.Overall, this was a quick, fun read that put me in the holiday spirit. I'll definitely add this author to my "must find more books from" list.