Christmas / Fairytale

Comfort & Joy

Author: Kristin Hannah

Average Rating:   2.5 / 5

Trigger Warnings:

Joy Candellaro has always loved Christmas. How has so much changed in one year? Now school is out and she’s facing two weeks alone, painfully aware that she is freshly divorced and estranged from her family. Unable to dredge up any enthusiasm for the Holiday, Joy makes a spur of the moment decision to hop on a plane heading for beautiful British Columbia. When she unexpectedly ends up in the Olympic rainforest, Joy leans into her new-found spontaneity and seizes the opportunity to walk away from her empty life at home and go in search of an adventure. What she finds is more than she ever could have imagined. 

In a small town in the middle of the rainforest, 8-year-old Bobby O’Shea is dreading his first Christmas without a mother – and with his previously absent father. Struggling to deal with the loss and change, Bobby has withdrawn into an imaginary world. His father Daniel is at a loss for how to help his son and is desperate to connect with him. When Bobby meets Joy, these two lost souls are instantly tied to each other. And in helping Bobby and Daniel to rediscover their relationship, Joy also finds healing.

But Joy can only stay so long in the haven of the rainforest, and her new place of safety and comfort will be ripped away from her, breaking her heart again. Will she have enough hope to hold onto those magical days with Bobby and Daniel, and have the courage to search out that version of what life could look like? 

Lydia : 3/5

This book is a good comfort read! It is cozy and quick and should be read with a hot cocoa and Baileys in hand. I can see why people wouldn’t like this one as the events are very unbelievable, however I believe it is meant to be read as a fable or a fairytale rather than a relatable fiction novel. Based on how I read this one, I give it a 3. The writing was poor in some parts and this led to it being very boring and easy to skip over in some parts. 

In terms of Romance, this is not a spicy/sensual read and if that is what you’re expecting, prepare to be disappointed (which happened to me tbh). I find labeling this one as ‘romance’ is a stretch because there were minimal romantic scenes between the two main characters.  

I did not anticipate the twist ending and that is honestly what saved this book for me. A big theme was family and how important they are, as well as how important forgiveness is. I appreciate a book that can take such big themes and make them entertaining to read. Is this book groundbreaking? No. Is this book entertaining and perfect for Christmas time? In my opinion, yes. 

Megan : 2.5/5

I feel like I would’ve enjoyed this one more had it been longer (the story felt rushed at times) and had it been a different genre. Marketing it as a Christmas story felt off. The back of the book gives nothing away, and in the first 30 pages a lot goes down. I wasn’t expecting that at all! As I read the book, I began to have suspicions about Joy. Something wasn’t adding up. It was giving me similar vibes to an old Reese Witherspoon movie and a book I had read back in high school. When the big reveal came, it just confirmed that I had been correct.

It was a cute relationship between Joy and Bobby; her dealing with her divorce and a young boy alone, and both needing comfort and healing. Reading about the reconciliation between father and son, and how Joy “helped” facilitate that was the only thing that gave it a Christmassy, slightly Hallmark-y, feel. But really, it could have been set at any time during the year and the story still could’ve been told the exact same way. One minor annoyance for me was Bobby’s age. On the back of the book it says he’s six years old, but when he first meets Joy, he says he’s eight. It doesn’t matter for the story, but that’s a detail that should’ve been discovered during the editing process.

This book is a quick read. That being said, there weren’t enough pages to properly reconcile the relationship between Joy and her sister. I can understand Joy’s view of “life’s too short”, but it seemed to happen too quickly, or it wasn’t adequately explained by the passing of time. Overall, it’s an alright book. It can be read at any point during the year and it does touch on some good themes about love, family, and forgiveness.

Sharaya : 2/5

Woah. Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting at all and I’m surprised to say that I was not a fan. I’m usually up for a bit of a magical Christmas twist, but this came across as a little too surreal for me. I felt like I wasn’t swept up in the magic, I was just waiting for the explanation to land. While you get to know Bobby and Joy fairly well, I didn’t like how distant Daniel was from the reader. He had potential to be a good character and was obviously a loving father, but he was under-developed. Therefore, I wasn’t invested in the romance (such as it was) at all. 

As I often find with shorter books, I was unhappy with the necessary speed of the character and story arcs. Joy had some huge obstacles in her relationship with her sister. And while I generally root for forgiveness and reconciliation, Kristin Hannah took us through that transition way too quickly, and I was pretty upset by how things were settled between them (or not settled). It felt like surface forgiveness, where the deeper problems weren’t actually discussed and then resolved. 

I could see what Hannah was aiming for with this book, and while it’s an interesting concept, I don’t think that it was well executed. I was quite disappointed by this misfire.

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