Blogmas Day 20: Book Review: Twelve Days of Christmas – Debbie Macomber

Believe it or not, this was the first book by Debbie Macomber I’ve ever read, and I immediately fell in love with it. I’ve bought it two years ago and read it then, and reread it now. What can I say? I still love it! And that is although it isn’t totally without its faults… But let me start from the beginning:

Julia Padden is cheerful and happy, and she is liked by everybody – and likes everybody but her neighbor Cain Maddox. No matter how hard she has tried to be particularly nice to him, he is still grumbly and ruff, and destroys her every try to be the kind, cheerful self that she usually is.

Julia often complains to her best friend Cammie about Cain, who suggests to try to kill him with kindness. Coincidentally, Julia has to write a blog for a job position she is after, and after Cammie’s suggestion, she calls the blog “Twelve Days of Christmas” and decides to track her progress in project kindness. She now has exactly twelve days to turn her grumpy neighbor into a Christmas loving and kind person. Julia thinks there is no chance to succeed at all, until Cain “Ebenezer” starts to get changed by her kindness towards him…

Well, we all know how this will turn out, don’t we? And yet – and yet – the story is sweet and festive and interesting nonetheless! Doing something like this is always a very, very bad idea I think, especially when you do it with ulterior motives and not just because you want to be nice to them, but it is even worse when the relationship then changes and turns into more, which is the case here… This is also one of the two slight negatives that I have: I didn’t really believe how easily Cain changed his opinion in the end because he was actually really badly betrayed by Julia if you ask me. The other thing is – I didn’t really like Julia very much. I know she is supposed to be this wonderfully cheerful and happy and kind character, but I didn’t really believe her to be honest. And this is probably not a good start, is it? However, and I know how unbelievable THIS must sound to you now – I still really liked the book. Maybe the story not so much, but it is festive and cosy and wintery, and it really gets you in the festive mood no matter what. Plus, Cain is really possessive and actually quite romantic which I liked J

So if you’re looking for a quick and easy festive read right before Christmas, this might be the book for you! However, out of the two Debbie Macomber books I’ve read, I liked Dashing Through the Snow better (you can read why here). Let me know if you try any of these!

Lots of love and Happy Christmas,

Noly