Christmas Letters by Debbie Macomber—Mira (J1)

This is my first Dream Team entry into eHarlequin’s 100,000 Book Challenge, and already I have a confession to make. For years I’ve seen Debbie Macomber books grace grocery store endcaps, well-placed bookstore tables and even Sam’s Club pallets, but—okay, are you sitting down for this?—I had never read one until I purchased this year’s holiday two-fer, “Christmas Wishes”. So how could a romance fiction fan and wannabe author overlook her for so long? I have no idea. Could simply be a function of my slow reading speed given my low vision, or it could be some weird notion I had that she wrote mostly westerns. In any case, I’ve “discovered” her, bought what I could find on store shelves, then promptly went to eBay where I was able to locate a huge lot of her backlist titles. Guess my TBR is formidably huge already (laughs). Just because teammate Sadhbh could read every last one of them in a single day doesn’t mean it won’t take me all year to get through them! Of course I’ll have to pause for James Patterson releases, but I plan to make serious headway with Macomber’s single title/reissues list.

On to “Christmas Letters”… In this story, Macomber builds a nice double romance along with some pretty funky and memorable characters. I mean really, how could you forget the neighbor who sees the heroine’s future in the litterbox or in her bowl of Raisin Bran?!? Then there’s K.O.’s sister Zelda who married Zach and had twin daughters they names Zoe and Zora. The Z Family I found myself calling them.

The story starts with K.O. being mortified by her sister’s intention to skip Christmas as suggested in a runaway hit parenting book “The Free Child” by Wynn Jeffries. The book even went so far as to say parents should “throw Santa under the sled”. Not wanting to see her precious five-year-old nieces deprived of Christmas, K.O. decids to take it up with the author himself when she runs into him in a coffee shop. He refuses to believe the children’s behavior got even worse after the implementation of his parenting technique. Enter the big conflict: how K.O. and Wynn feel about Christmas.

Fast forward a few days to when the neighbor lady has a vision while changing the litterbox. She sees her dear friend K.O. matched up with their building’s newest resident. Wanna guess who? Yep, K.O.’s favorite parenting author! To make things even more interesting, LaVonne (the neighbor) ends up inviting both of them to her place for dinner in true matchmaker fashion.

K.O.s drawn to Wynn, yet every time she sees her unruly nieces, she shudders at the thought of having a relationship with the man.

How do K.O. and Wynn resolve their conflict of opinions? I don’t want to spoil the story, so you’ll have to read it to find out.

The fun characters really drew me into the story. In fact the neighbor lady and sister were even more memorable than the heroine to me. Simple, concise word choices and pleasant sentence meter made this a fun, easy read for me. And not having an ample sizzle factor was actually nice for a change. (Guess I’ve been reading too many Blaze and Spices, LOL!)

That brings up an interesting discussion point. Does too much of one thing make you want more, or leave you wanting change without even realizing it? I know my tastes tend to run in cycles. How ‘bout yours?

Take care,
Jill Freeze
http://www.JillFreeze.com