Merry Freakin' Christmas

'This Christmas'

Author: Jane Green, Jennifer Coburn and Liz Ireland

Format: Paperback

Published: Kensington; Oct. 2009

Pages: 288
Genre: Chick-lit; Holiday
Rating: C
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Synopsis: The holidays can sometimes make or break a relationship. Now, in this trio of warm, witty, insightful stories, three very different women face questions of the heart that could change all their Christmases to come...

When her husband's job takes him away from home indefinitely, a restless suburban wife and mother must confront Christmas alone--and decide whether she's better off that way. . .. A newlywed is haunted by thoughts of her husband's first wife--and comes up with an unusual plan to cure herself in time for Christmas.... Longing to fit into her family's picture perfect holiday celebration, a young woman finally brings home the perfect boyfriend--only to find that nothing is as she expected.

Infused with the hopes and dreams of the season, these entertaining and exquisitely written stories by New York Times bestselling author Jane Green, Jennifer Coburn, and Liz Ireland will inspire your Christmas spirit, and stay with you all year long.

My Take: Now, I know what you may be thinking. A holiday book, that was so two weeks ago! Well best laid plans to have this read and reviewed before Christmas and all that ... just go with it, ok! I was really excited to get the chance to read a holiday story this year. I am not the hugest fan of holiday fiction but every once in a while I get in the mood. Maybe it’s because I needed an extra jolt of holiday spirit or something so when this was sent to me for review I squealed with glee. Awesome, just what I needed. However, upon opening it, it wasn’t quite what I had hoped for. Why? Well the stories totally stressed me out!

I’ll break it down for you, this here is a collection of three short stories. One each by the above named authors. It appears as though they were all originally published back in 2005 so I think they may have slapped a new cover on this and called it a new book so don’t be alarmed if you’ve read these stories before. I however, have not so I wasn’t too disappointed to have been given it although I was surprised by the original copyright date.

The first story was probably the best of the bunch. Jane Green’s is entitled Vacation and it is about a wife, Sarah Evans, who has become disillusioned with her life. Not the newest story out there but one I could get behind. She loves her children but she misses the satisfaction she used to get from her job and her life in the city and she is not happy with how her and her husband had grown apart. His job sends him to Chicago and this gives them a much needed “vacation” from each other to decide if they should make their marriage work, just in time for the holidays. What was good about this short story was you could empathize with Sarah and her plight and if you are a Jane Green fan (which I am) you’d want to read this one.

The second story was by Jennifer Coburn, a new to me author, and was entitled The Second Wife of Reilly. From what I can gather Coburn has written a novel called The Wife of Reilly. I haven’t read it and I probably won’t because the second wife was vapid and obsessed with the first wife. It was the holidays, she was 6 months into her new marriage to a great guy and was so obsessed with his first wife that the book couldn’t talk about anything else. I found myself saying ‘just go to therapy already’ or ‘why did you marry him then?’

The final short story was by another new to me author, Liz Ireland.  Mistletoe and Holly was set up to be a story that I could get really excited about. A couple that had just started dating, Holly and Jason are about to spend their first holiday together at Holly’s parents house. Holly has talked it up as normally being over the top, yet when they arrive it all becomes a bit of a disaster. Normally, this would be something I could relate to and crack up over. Except when it’s the middle of the holidays and you, yourself are dealing with families and running from one thing to the next you want to escape reality (not that this was actually happening, I’m just saying) not be totally stressed out by a story in which everything that could possibly go wrong did. It was totally making me paranoid!

So, here we have a collection of Christmas stories in which all three were a bit depressing and one was good. I think there are probably better collections out there. However, at the holidays we are all probably so highly strung we are all looking for something different in our reading!

Cover Lust: I did really like this cover with its postcard perfect setting and it totally matched the setting Jane Green described in her story. It’s a winner!