Review: Trading Christmas

Trading Christmas by Debbie Macomber

Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 363
Published: October 25, 2011
Publisher: Mira
Genre: Fiction, Christmas

My Rating: 4/5

Summary (from chapters.ca):

Trading Houses. Trading Towns. Trading Christmas!

Emily Springer, widowed mother of one, decides to leave Leavenworth, Washington, to spend Christmas with her daughter in Boston.

Charles Brewster, history professor, curmudgeon and resident of Boston, wants to avoid Christmas altogether. He figures a prison town should be nice and quiet over the holidays, except he's thinking of the wrong Leavenworth!

Through an internet site, Charles and Emily arrange to swap houses for the holiday. So Emily goes to Boston, and discovers that her daughter has gone to Florida. And Charles arrives in Leavenworth to discover that it's not the prison town, it's Santa's village! The place is full of Christmas trees, Christmas music and elves.

Meanwhile, Emily's friend Faith Kerrigan travels to Leavenworth to visit her and instead finds Charles the grinch. Then Charles's brother, Ray, shows up at his home in Boston to discover that he isn't there, but Emily is.

Through all the mix-ups and misunderstandings, amid the chaos and confusion, romance begins to emerge in unexpected ways. Because everything changes at Christmas!

Review:

First off, this is technically two books in one - The second story is called The Forgetful Bride. However, as I only intended to read Trading Christmas, I will only count that towards Holiday Reads 2011.

Trading Christmas was exactly the type of story I imagined it would be. A perfect holiday romance involving the most unsuspecting of characters - honestly, it was written just for this feature.

I loved the characters and the situations that they found themselves in. Emily, a Christmas nut, winds up in a baron apartment with not a stitch of cheer and Charles, in a town that lives and breaths Christmas. It was a pure delight to read about each situation that they found themselves in. Add in some crazy supporting characters, a santa and six elves, and you have yourself one well rounded group.

While the story was predictable and the outcome obvious, I truly found that this book was exactly what I was looking for in a Christmas read... light, fun and happy.

Overall, this story was an A+ in my books.

Mini-review of The Forgetful Bride:

I love when novels have bonus stories... but I don't like when they are as long as the main story that I purchased the novel for. The Forgetful Bride was an 'okay' story. The characters were good but not memorable.

Personally, I love a romantic story and I love a happy ending but it really bothered me that this wasn't a Christmas story but yet was included in a novel called Trading Christmas. I sort of felt ripped off and this was likely the reason that I downgraded my rating of the overall book.

On the whole, The Forgetful Bride was a good story and one that had a concept I had never heard of before. If it were a full novel I think it would have held just the right amount of added detail to make the story a real jem.

Overall, a bit of a miss for me.