Twelve Days of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas, it's appropriate that I review Debbie Macomber's Twelve Days of Christmas (#1,290).  I must say, it was a bit of a letdown for me.  I normally enjoy her writing enormously, especially her holiday books, but this one didn't quite do it for me.

Julia is caught up in her job and volunteer activities as Christmas approaches in Seattle.  But she is seriously annoyed by Cain, the rude and grumpy neighbor across the hall.  The day he steals her newspaper in the lobby right in front of her is the last straw.  Her best friend suggests that "killing him with kindness" could be her best revenge.  If she blogs about it, it could help her achieve her ambition of landing a job in social media.  The Twelve Days of Christmas blog becomes an overnight sensation, of course.  Her kindness campaign is also working, though...

I guess my main problem with this book is the character of Cain.  He is so aloof and unpleasant that I could not buy the speed at which Julia won him over, or that she fell so hard for someone who so obviously wants to be alone.  Just something about his chauvinistic character never appealed to me in the least.  And if you can't root for the protagonists, who are you going to root for?

The book includes the first few pages of the next holiday book by Ms. Macomber, Dashing Through the Snow, and reading those few pages of a book I do remember fondly was enough to carry on with a Christmas tradition.  There's always next year!

Nosy Neighbors

The tenants of historic Shelly House have all received eviction notices; their landlord intends to tear down the building and replace it with a luxury high rise apartment house.  Not all the tenants are taking this lying down.  Freya Sampson's novel Nosy Neighbors (#1,289) does a wonderful job pulling together an unlikely cast of characters to bond for a single cause.

Dorothy Darling has been there in Flat 2 for over thirty years, and nothing is going to budge her.  Across the hall, her nemesis, Joseph Chambers, has yet another illegal subtenant - one with neon pink hair!  Then there's the unsocial tenant above her, the big man with the pugnacious and smelly dog, and Gloria with a constant parade of unsuitable men in and out of her apartment.  The Siddiqs, father and daughter, are about the only other tenants Dorothy is willing to tolerate, but even she misses the wonderful food odors which used to waft from their apartment while Mrs. Siddiq was still alive.  It takes a body being carried from Shelly House to begin to unite these reluctant neighbors with a little help from Joseph's Jack Russell terrier, Reggie.

I think I enjoyed this book so much because it reminded me of Clare Pooley's books about community-building from unlikely sources.  The book doesn't have a fairy tale ending, but Ms. Sampson does write a satisfactory open-ended conclusion.  Can't ask more than that!