The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! It's hard to believe that the new year is right around the corner. I do apologize for my lack of posts these last couple of months. With November's NaNoWriMo and December's business of both Christmas preparations and lots of We've Seen Santa events I hardly had a moment to breathe. I hadn't gotten much reading done either. The day after Christmas was spent cleaning up from the celebrations. With my house mostly back in order, I finally had a chance to just sit down and refuse to do anything besides reading yesterday. So, here is what I have accomplished thus far for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge.

I started the reading challenge way back in November with Debbie Macomber's Christmas in Cedar Cove.








This book is actually a compilation of two Cedar Cove stories. The first is 5-B Poppy Lane. It is a wonderful story that will take your breath away. At times, it nearly brought me to tears. The second is A Cedar Cove Christmas. This one actually did move me to tears. Such a beautiful story of friendship and love. The familiar characters of Cedar Cove prove themselves to yet again be a wonderful collection of varying personalities. They show us how we should behave towards each other, not just at Christmas, but throughout the year.

The next story I read was a novella I read on my new Kindle Fire (thanks Dad). It was Merry Christmas, Baby by Monica Jackson.






This is a story of unexpected love. After catching her fiance in bed with her maid of honor, Sharyn is gun shy to start another relationship. When a sexy physical therapist shows up at her door to help care for her mother, she blocks his every advance. But, they say "love will find a way," and this saying holds true in this novella about finding love and learning to trust again. Merry Christmas, Baby is a great story for the on the go Christmas season. Although, I found myself wishing it had been a full length novel with much more story to tell.

I followed that novella with what can only be referred to as a short story. Although novellas and novels are the only things that count during the course of The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge, I felt that this short story deserved recognition. The Twelve Days of Christmas Mystery by Daphne Coleridge was a cute little story. I'm not quite sure where I picked up this short, but I am glad that I did. I will be looking into reading some of her mysteries in the near future.

After reading Coleridge's short story, I read another novella by Monica Jackson. This one was What Goes Around. In this novella, there is a family curse. I do love family curses. The main character, Evelyn, is the only one who can break this curse. The way to break the curse is to choose love. It was a cute story, and I enjoyed meeting the characters. However, I felt that it would have benefited from another edit. I do not usually mention editing snafoos, as I know that  they do happen. Even such greats as Stephen King have typos and misedits in their books at times. However, this one was bad enough that I feel it is only fair to mention it before sending you off to read it.

I have read a few Children's books this season. Of course there were many readings of We've Seen Santa throughout the season.





Though, I am not entirely sure that this counts as a read book since I knew the story before it ever became a book. LOL.

I did however read Jingle All the Way to my daughter and Jingle, the Husky Pup.





This is an adorable story. However, I am disappointed with the interaction of Jingle. My daughter is five years old, and a fairly skilled reader. When she reads the book to Jingle, he does not respond to her voice when she reads the magic words. I believe that the interactive plush toys should respond well to a child's voice as reading to their own toy and getting a response would encourage reading in young children. We also watched the movie on the Hallmark channel.

We watched many Christmas movies thus far this season, and I still have many more to watch that I recorded on the DVR. My favorite movie I watched this year was It's a Wonderful Life. I watched it on my birthday this year, which made it somehow all the more special.

That is about all I have read/watched this year so far. I am currently working my way through Plum Pudding Murder by Joanne Fluke.




She is one of my favorite authors, and it is a definite bonus that she includes such wonderful recipes in her books. This was a present from my daughter for Christmas. I am excited to be able to read it so immediately because I am currently reading only Christmas books for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge. On that note, I am going to go curl up wiht Plum Pudding Murder and enjoy a mostly relaxed day, broken only by the fact that I am washing all the bedding in the house so we can ring in the new year on clean bedding.

Hope everyone has a Wonderful New Year!