Christmas, Christmas time is here,
Time for joy and
Time for cheer…
Time for anthologies.
A Christmas to Remember is my first Christmas anthology of the year and you would think
with an author like Lisa Kleypas as one of the contributors, I would be ecstatic. You would think. But in the end it was just a so-so read, and one which I suspect will quickly disappear from my memory.The first story is I Will by Lisa Kleypas and it is a reissue from 2008. Ms. Kleypas is lucky I hadn’t read this before and I didn’t have to rant about repackaging, reissues and such. Anyway, this is a typical rake-wastrel depraved hero, Andrews, and a do-gooder-bluestocking heroine, Caroline, who hates him. But that animosity doesn’t stop Andrew from blackmailing Caroline into pretending to be his girlfriend so he can get back into his horrible father’s good graces again and be put back in the will. I had my hopes up with this story. First of all, it was a Lisa Kleypas. Secondly, it has an antagonistic couple at its center. But somewhere along the line the story lost its focus and scurried along to an unsatisfactory ending. – C-
Deck the Halls with Love by Lorraine Heath.
For those of you who follow Lorraine Heath (I don’t) this short story is connected to her Lords of Pembrook series. The hero is Alastair and the heroine is Caroline, and they already know each other. In fact, they loved each other, but then Alastair broke Caroline’s heart by becoming engaged to someone else. But now Alastair has been turned loose from that engagement (previous book) and he is determined to have Caroline. Here’s the problem: Caroline is engaged to someone else and she is also determined to hold a grudge against Alastair. This is a decent story of a second chance at love. It was the shortest story in the bunch but happened to be the best in the group. – B-
No Groom at the Inn by Megan Frampton.
Lady Sophronia – heroine, James Archer – hero. This story has another fake fiancée story line but in this case the participants don’t know each other – at all. James doesn’t like to stay in one place for very long. He travels constantly and he is running scared because his mother is planning a house party with a bunch of single women and he’s afraid of being trapped into marriages and tied down for the rest of his life. Why he simply can’t explain to his mother that he’s not ready is not explained. Also the need for his wanderlust is never adequately explained. Sophronia jumps at the chance to take up with a perfect stranger to escape a life of drudgery.
For this story to work it required a longer format. Both characters in this story required some major changes in their outlooks, and they were not given enough time to do that. – C
The Duke’s Christmas Wish by Vivienne Lorret.
You know, taking a modern them and trying to change it into a historical setting doesn’t usually work. And, it didn’t here either. Our hero – the Duke – wants to belong to some scientific club or something and he has come up with a formula. The formula is a way to match people – like a dating site – sort of. He wants to avoid Ivy (heroine) because something about her is disruptive and she could prevent him from getting into this scientific club. It was all very silly and the formula-match-making plot line didn’t work in a historical short story setting. – C-
Overall, even for an anthology A Christmas to Remember was pretty monotonous.
Time/place: Regency England
Sensuality: mixed bag
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