A Gift to Remember (New York City Christmas)

by Melissa Hill

[Leah]

Melissa Hill is an author whose books I ALWAYS look forward to reading. She’s such a clever author, she’s the Queen of the Plot Twist (copyright me) and to know she was releasing two books in 2013 was utterly amazing! Two chances to read a new Melissa Hill book in one year? Fantastic. I wish she could keep it up and join the other legions of two-books-a-year authors. I’m greedy like that, y’see so when my competition win copy of A Gift To Remember arrived, I nearly died of happiness seeing it in it’s beautiful gift bag (yes, a gift bag). I couldn’t wait to dive in and I wasn’t disappointed.

Everyone who loves books must think that the best book you can ever read is about books themselves. Duh. Isn’t that really obvious? It is to me, anyway. I love reading books about books, and bookstores, and the like so when I knew A Gift To Remember when set in the reading world, well, I was happy as a pig in mud! The plot sounds very similar to the Sandra Bullock movie While You Were Sleeping (which I haven’t seen, so I can’t say if it’s definitively similar), but the basic premise is this: On riding her bike to work one day (at Chaucer’s, where I want to go and LIVE), Darcy Archer accidentally runs over a man, and ends up knocking him out so badly he ends up in the hospital. Darcy is racked with guilt, especially when she realises the ambulance guys have left his dog behind, along with a sturdy, beautifully-wrapped gift. She’s desperate to make amends, and wants to get Bailey, the dog, back to his rightful owner, but as Darcy delves into Aidan’s life, it’s like looking into the life of her perfect life partner, but that’s crazy, right?

A Gift To Remember is a book lovers dream book. Filled with the tales of Chaucers, the book store where Darcy works, where I’d like to go work, filled with book quotes from famous authors, and is just so bookish! It’s lovely. It’s the best type of book a person could write, and I adored diving into the novel. I adored everything, really. The characters were so lovely, I really felt for Darcy, because what she did wasn’t on purpose! I loved how eager she was to help Aidan and to get Bailey back to his owner along with the gift bag. I loved digging into Aidan’s life and learning more about him and I found the snippets pertaining to his life to be both fascinating and mind-bogglingly confusing (if I’m being honest). Aidan’s life is definitely a massive puzzle and as the novel was going on and on I did find myself getting frustrated with so many loose ends; it was like an episode of Lost, more questions than answers and the questions just kept on coming!

Though, I will admit, the novel did give a spectacular payout and when it all started unwinding and we started to learn how it all connected and came together, I was so glad I’d kept reading and it was so worth it. It is, after all, what Melissa does best. She constructs such fascinating puzzles and when you see the finished product you’re like “Wow, that was actually pretty great”, she’s been known to shock me from time to time with her revelations so I don’t know why I was surprised. It is her forte after all. It is absolutely worth sticking with all the questions because the answers are pretty special. Lost may not have ended too well (not that I can say, I gave up sometime in Season 4), but A Gift To Remember most certainly did. There was even a reference to one of my favourite shows The Big Bang Theory in there, featuring Siri and Raj’s infamous love story… A beautiful novel, proving that the strap line on my proof copy that states Melissa is the Queen of the modern fairytale isn’t too far off the mark!