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A review by turophile
Christmas Kisses & Wishes by Sharon Kleve
3.0
A sweet Christmas short story that fans of dogs, small towns and cozy settings will enjoy. The biggest challenge with this short story is that it should have been a book. I know with Christmas/holiday stories, they tend to be short and often in anthologies. I think it’s a challenge for authors who typically write longer pieces to pare a story back to its essence when fitting it within the confines of so few pages – in this case, only about 25 pages. It’s too bad because I really enjoyed the characters, particularly the grandmother who’s not the focus of the story, the settings, and the dogs!. The set-up would make an excellent longer romance novel, so the reader’s left wanting more.
Our heroine Finn is getting over her divorce after her five- year marriage to William. Her wise and spunky grandmother has decided that Finn is spinning her wheels and that she needs to get out of town. Finn’s a romance novel editor and can take her job anywhere, so she embarks on a year long journey with three months spent in four different locations across the United States. It’s this aspect of the story that I really wish would have been explored more. It would have been great to watch Finn as she grew, matured and got over her marriage as well as the friends she develops at each spot. By concentrating on just one piece of the journey, we only get snippets of the story. The first chapter also felt as if it crammed way too much in that wasn’t needed to set the story up. For example, Finn makes a stop at a lodge in a different town and decides to leave right away. It did not add to the narrative. I’d rather have seen more of the development between our main character. The romance is sweet, but the plot was too big for a story this short.
I’ve not read Ms. Kleve’s books before – the set-up, plotting, and characters of this book all fit what I like to read and I look forward to seeing those aspects in a longer book.
Our heroine Finn is getting over her divorce after her five- year marriage to William. Her wise and spunky grandmother has decided that Finn is spinning her wheels and that she needs to get out of town. Finn’s a romance novel editor and can take her job anywhere, so she embarks on a year long journey with three months spent in four different locations across the United States. It’s this aspect of the story that I really wish would have been explored more. It would have been great to watch Finn as she grew, matured and got over her marriage as well as the friends she develops at each spot. By concentrating on just one piece of the journey, we only get snippets of the story. The first chapter also felt as if it crammed way too much in that wasn’t needed to set the story up. For example, Finn makes a stop at a lodge in a different town and decides to leave right away. It did not add to the narrative. I’d rather have seen more of the development between our main character. The romance is sweet, but the plot was too big for a story this short.
I’ve not read Ms. Kleve’s books before – the set-up, plotting, and characters of this book all fit what I like to read and I look forward to seeing those aspects in a longer book.