A Christmas to Remember

by Jenny Hale

[Leah]

It pains me, but I am DNFing this at chapter 8. When Kim sent me over the book, I was so excited to dive in! I loved Jenny's first novel, and I had such high hopes for A Christmas To Remember, but I just couldn't click with Carrie.

Carrie is so judgemental - at the end of the day, when you've only been in a job for three days, you can't really be acting the way she acts. She's a nanny, she's supposed to be there for the kids, and instead she's hung up on Adam. If Adam didn't have a job that requires him 24/7 he wouldn't need a nanny, and it bugged me that she was willing to judge how much time he did or did not spend with his kids, after three days.

I also couldn't put up with the fact that Carrie is so down on herself. She has all these self-help books (a big no no, for me) and she spends the first 8 chapters continually comparing herself to others, and feeling worthless, and useless, and all that stuff. If we had been told it once, fine, but she keeps repeating the same stuff, again and again, and I just wanted to shake her and tell her to cop on to herself. If you want a life, you go make yourself a life, you don't complain about it constantly.

I wanted to like the novel, and there were times I could lose myself in the book early on, but then Carrie would complain that Adam had "upset" her by answering a phone call, or she would wonder if the person on the phone named Andy was a beautiful woman and I just didn't understand why she was so bothered by what Adam did. You've only known him a couple days, so how can you be so concerned over him? It just rubbed me up the wrong way, and I just sadly couldn't continue with the novel.

If Carrie had been a lot less judgemental, and a bit more confident, this novel would have kept me hooked. Instead, it just came across as a bit preachy and holier-than-thou.

I'm sure a lot of people will love the book, but it just didn't click with me for some reason. :(