I'm in a Christmas gift-giving mood and will be giving away a different Christmas book everyday for the week of December 13-19! Be sure to check the rules below. And good luck!
Today's giveaway: Finding Father Christmas by Robin Jones Gunn
Description and Review:
Here's the rules.
1. For each book drawing you wish to enter, post a comment on that day's post.
2. If you have a blog, please consider posting a like back to this giveaway. And put your blog link in your comment. Thanks.
3. I'm taking away my "Live in U.S." requirements. I like my Aussie friends and want them to have a chance to win too! :)
4. Answer today's Christmas question in your post.
1. What is the strangest grab bag (white elephant) type gift you've ever seen someone give? (My answer, someone gave a jar with all their baby teeth in it! eeeew!)
5. Check back next week to see who won! I will draw for all the books on the 19th and mail them that day.
Description: Finding Father Christmas, Robin brings readers a poignant Christmas novella about a woman, desperate for a place to belong, who travels to England a few days before Christmas, looking for the father she never knew. Miranda Carson's search for her father takes a turn she never expected when she finds herself in London, with only a few feeble clues to who he might be. Unexpectedly welcomed into a family that doesn't recognize her, and whom she's quickly coming to love, she faces a terrible decision. Should she reveal her true identity and destroy their idyllic image of her father? Or should she carry the truth home with her to San Francisco and remain alone in this world? Whatever choice she makes during this London Christmas will forever change the future for both herself and the family she can't bear to leave.
My Review: I enjoyed this sweet and tender story of belonging. Who doesn't want to feel a sense of belonging, especially during holidays? Miranda hasn't had that feeling for a long time. Miranda was raised by a theater actress who combined wistful fantasies with reality in Miranda's childhood. All Miranda's questions to her about her father were resisted and an old photo discovered in her mother's purse is all the clues she has to his identity. Now in her thirties, and her mom's death decades past, Miranda once again seeks the identity of her father. On a whim she follows the only clue of the photo to a phototgraphy studio in England. Unfortunately the photography studio has been closed, but a stop in a quaint storybook tea shop extends a tiny bit of hope in learning about her father through others at a play of A Christmas Carol. Miranda finds herself whisked away to enjoy comradiere and friendship with these actors and friends who invite her to join them for Christmas the next day. More surprises await her, the longer she stays with these kind and hospitable friends. This is just the kind of book I like to read around the holidays! There is a sense of hope and good cheer about the people Gunn writes about. It makes me to want to invite them all over for Christmas dinner at my house! The theme of belonging is beautifully captured in Miranda's recognition that belonging to the family of God makes Christmas not just a holiday, but a state of mind.