2.5/5 (physical book)

I finally picked up this book after hearing about it for about four years now. I normally don't pick up holiday-themed reads, but I wanted to give it a shot this year. There were things I enjoyed about this book, but there were also things that very quickly ruined it for me.

To start with the positives, I was excited to have three short stories all interconnected. I was hesitant about the execution of this before reading, but I think the three authors did a nice job of interlacing all of the characters and storylines together. The connections did not feel forced, and each story, though connected to the others, had a life all of its own.

I did feel like the first story was a bit short, and I would have liked to read a bit more about the events that happen at the end, however, it was a cute and fun story that expressed what family and friends mean during the holiday season. I also enjoyed the fact that there was more than one holiday represented in the stories.

I also enjoyed the romances throughout each book. They each felt independent of each other yet connected in the "holiday miracle" kind of way. They also did not feel too superficial. The first story felt a little forced, but the other two were cute and fluffy.

I did come into issues with some of the language used in the third story. Phrases like (1)"He seemed so exotic" (219) (in reference to a Cherokee character) and (2) "...or a dwarf like that lady I saw on the Discovery Channel who was less than three feet tall. I could not take a teeny-tiny pig from a teeny-tiny woman, no way" (333). I found this language highly problematic.

(1) It is extremely ethnocentric to refer to those of non-European descent as "exotic." This classifies them as an "other" and an object in which to be looked at. I felt like it should not, especially in the context of this story, be used to describe another individual who is not caucasian.

(2) So many things wrong with this. First, the tone in which it is written is demeaning and joke-like. Instead of listing dwarfism with being "blind, or paralyzed," the author chose to further state that the protagonist was referring to someone they saw on the Discovery Channel. To me, this makes it seem like the character is saying that individuals with dwarfism are only seen on TV, giving the term an "other" tag, similar to using the term "exotic." I was then extremely put off by the way the author continued to write "I could not take a teeny-tiny pig from a teeny-tiny woman, no way" (333) like it is some sort of joke. This is not any way people should be talked to, and I think having it in our literature is very problematic.

I did for the most part enjoy reading these stories. They were not fantabulous, but they were a light winter read and something I could use after finishing my finals week of school, however, the language in the third story really dropped the star rating for me.