Home for the Holidays Written by Christine Lynxwiler

Oh my Stars, well first... only two more days until the Winter Holiday and the world didn't end so hurray. It was after all only the sixth? Apocalypses seem to be the norm the past few years huh? So, yes another Christmas story and in all honesty I hated this book. I really tried to enjoy this story it is the classic two kids grow up together being best friends and then one falls in love with the other and the other is looking for their perfect partner not realizing their true love has been there all along. So basically I was reading a Taylor Swift song. The story wouldn't have been too terrible if it wasn't for the the fact free will was ripped out of this tale. Mentioning and thanking God more than once is ok, thanking and mentioning the Christian God over sixty times in what seems like a 70 page book seems just a tad excessive...perhaps I am over exaggerating but the Christian God was mentioned so much I was just becoming annoyed. The cute love story just kept having to take a back burner especially since there is a side story involving a pregnant woman, her son, unborn child, and druggie of a husband who are all saved now because they discovered Jesus. Lauren Forrester is a good Christian woman I know because the book tells me so several times and then there is her best friend Jeff Warren who is also a good Christian man, but is so blind to Lauren's love and how she suffers. The story goes Lauren leaves her happy comfortable dream of a home town in order to put some distance between her and Jeff so maybe she can prevent damaging their friendship. Once in the big city it is descriptions the author gives like this "A bearded man with multiple face piercings bumped into her and kept walking without a word. On his bare right arm, a tattoo of a spider in a bikini belly-danced with the movement of his muscle." The fact that a tattooed and pierced person was perhaps less friendly towards her in the big city just grated on me as it was a stereotype in fact this whole book was one big stereotype and not in a welcoming or overtly friendly way. The book hints heavily at the fact these two main characters are happy only because of God and that the family can only be saved if they become Christians it would've been an ok story but Jesus and God just kept being shoved into each and every page, and then the writing was just predictable and so was the story. Over all not my cup of tea, but a Taylor Swift song non the less.