♪ ♫ On the first day of Novellas my blogger gave to me…
The review of a Christmas Wreath and a crunchy cornflake recipeee ♪ ♫
Come join me today for the review of The Christmas Wreath and a festively-fun themed recipe!
Let's start this party off right by whipping up a few little goodies!
Nothing better than a theme-based snack to go along with your reading hour 🙂
Click the pic and head on over to Tastes Better from Scratch to find out how to make these super easy, Cornflake Christmas Wreaths!
Thank you very much to Lauren for allowing me the use of her festive snack to accompany today's book!
Once you've whipped up your little treats, don't forget to head back here for your download and my review!
The Christmas Wreath
Author: Angela Ford
Description: "Will the magic of Christmas forever connect two hearts?
Annie Dixon’s love for nature and her hometown of Glenville has her driven to find a way to keep the tree farm from outsiders. When the bank grants sixty days before the tree farm is listed for public sale, Annie and her friends devise a plan to finance the buy. The death of Annie’s childhood friend brings Detective Ryder Harris back to town and ignites a flame between the two. But is he really back for his sister’s funeral? For the first time in many years, Ryder is excited about the holidays. Annie believes this Christmas will be magical until she discovers his secret.
Will their love be strong enough to get past it?"
My View:
* WARNING: This Review may contain a few spoilers. So grab the book for yourself FIRST, then come on back here and let's compare some notes! *
Friends, let me tell you – I wanted to love this Christmassy Novella and was excited to dive in…but in my opinion it was seriously lacking.
I quickly found myself confused throughout and flipping back and forth to see if I had missed anything.
A few things here: Annie {without any hesitation} gives up her own family business that her parents had passed down, because she is "so distraught" over another families Christmas Tree Farm going up for sale upon their retirement. There was more description of the inside of the farmhouse and mixing lemonade in a jug than there was to anything in this story and basically zero character build-up to feel any sort of attachment to anyone in this story. Especially Carrie, who I feel held somewhat of an important part (probably the most important part?). I started getting excited around 16%, because Carrie had just been left by her scumbag hubby, Roy {a scam artist who is now on the lam}. She was devastated and Annie said she would go over to see her in the morning – Because of course, buying the Christmas Tree Farm was way more important than her nearest and dearest friend in a total meltdown of a crisis. The farm was bought by Annie and her 3 friends. – Back track a bit – Annie's business is a local flower shop, the other 2 girls you don't hear much of, but apparently they worked in retail (or something?). They all just sell their homes and quit their jobs to buy the farm. Speaking of buying the farm… There was no visit and all of a sudden Carrie has committed suicide. Suspense?? Absolutely not. Ryder, who is Carrie's brother that has been MIA for the past 15 years {who is a SSA, but disguises himself as NYPD}, comes back to Glenville to attend his sisters funeral. During the reception he asks Annie if she would like to get out of there because the sandwiches aren't satisfying?! lol!! Typical man, so I guess that was somewhat believable. There was also some awkward mention of "Annie's tight skirt" – and quite frankly, I found Carrie's eulogy, given by Annie, painful to read. Okay so about 2 sentences later Annie and Ryder are getting ready for a picnic that apparently is going to be like a 'huge thing' because Ryder wanted to question some folk around town {Missing money, involves Roy and a Ski Resort that is also for sale}. I thought this part may build up some suspense…But then I blinked. Ryder and Annie were now standing at her front door about to kiss goodnight. What!?! What happened at the picnic?! I am going to leave my review at that – There are quite a few more {questionable} things that happened before story end, but I'll leave the "suspense" up to the next reader 😉 If you feel that my review is a mess, it's because I feel like this book was a mess. If this makes sense: There was so much going on that there was no time to figure out WHAT was going on. I definitely didn't get that warm fuzzy Christmassy feeling I had hoped to achieve. I have read this novella twice now and still can't make sense of it. The raving 5 star reviews have me confused and feeling that I just can't comprehend things :)) The Christmas Wreath is listed as Forever Christmas Book 3 – So perhaps I need to read 1 and 2 to figure out what the hell was going on and who all these people were. Then again, I believe I had read this can be a standalone book. I would not take that advice. However, I may still try some other books by Angela Ford, she seems to be pretty popular – So she must know what she's doing. I would however love to hear your opinion! If you can spare a buck for the download – Please come back and let me know what you think! 🙂 Grab The Christmas Wreath from amazon.com or amazon.ca
My Rating
2 out of 5 Candy Canes – Because one candy cane is just mean.
Don't forget to check back in tomorrow, as I share another Christmassy novella review!..Oh, and a recipe too! 😉
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