A Wish for Christmas by Courtney Cole is a bit of an homage to It's A Wonderful Life: would life be better if the girl and the boy never met in childhood?
This has all of the warm and cozy vibes of a Hallmark movie - holiday traditions, warm beverages, sparkling snow, a picturesque small town, and enough conflict to make things interesting but nothing too serious. The heroine's work in publishing brings a bookish thread to the plot, and Elliott the dog is a great character who uses his goofy personality to bring the hero and heroine together.
My favorite aspect of the plot was the creative approach to memory care; this wasn't new to me but I've never seen it included in a novel. However, the "reverse engineering" of the couple's relationship felt too convenient and unbelievable, and the book within the book was unnecessary.
Because I really enjoyed The Christmas Dress by Courtney Cole in 2021, my expectations for this were quite high. Unfortunately, I didn't like A Wish for Christmas nearly as much, but my reading experience may have been completely different if I picked this up without any prior knowledge of the author.
Thank you to Avon Books and NetGalley for the review copy of this holiday novel.
This has all of the warm and cozy vibes of a Hallmark movie - holiday traditions, warm beverages, sparkling snow, a picturesque small town, and enough conflict to make things interesting but nothing too serious. The heroine's work in publishing brings a bookish thread to the plot, and Elliott the dog is a great character who uses his goofy personality to bring the hero and heroine together.
My favorite aspect of the plot was the creative approach to memory care; this wasn't new to me but I've never seen it included in a novel. However, the "reverse engineering" of the couple's relationship felt too convenient and unbelievable, and the book within the book was unnecessary.
Because I really enjoyed The Christmas Dress by Courtney Cole in 2021, my expectations for this were quite high. Unfortunately, I didn't like A Wish for Christmas nearly as much, but my reading experience may have been completely different if I picked this up without any prior knowledge of the author.
Thank you to Avon Books and NetGalley for the review copy of this holiday novel.
