Sugar And Spice [Mass Market Paperback]

This book is a collection of four romance novellas set during Christmas time.

First up is "The Christmas Stocking" by Fern Michaels. It finds Amy Baran and Gus Moss returning to their hometown to help their parents with projects relating to Christmas trees. Along they way, they meet and the sparks fly. The story started well, but I felt the plot resolved about thirty pages before the story ended.

Second comes "The Ghost of Christmas Past" by Beverly Barton. Katie Hadley is trying to escape her family and her memories, so she rents a cabin in the mountains. A blizzard arrives while she's trying to reach her destination and strands here with Mack MacKinnon. Will the sparks between them melt their cold hearts? This is the only story with any explicit content, but it is all in one chapter, so it can be avoided. Other then that, it was good.

Next is the reason I bought this book. In "The Twelve Desserts of Christmas," Joanne Fluke takes a break from murder and offers a romance with series star Hannah Swensen attempting to help two teachers and six kids left behind at a boarding school during the Christmas break. The kids make a bet over the teachers' romance, and trouble ensues. Joanne has included 9 recipes from her novels and three new recipes. I loved this story with its lighthearted and fun look at romance in a crowded setting.

Finally, "Twelve Days" by Shirley Jump offers office romance as Natalie Harris attempts to tempt boss Jake Lyons for a one night stand. But the secrets might just bring more then either expects. Another fun tale well told. This tale also includes a recipe, bringing the total for the book to a baker's dozen.

Each story is about 100 pages, making for quick reads. I did feel most of them were predictable, but the characters drew me into the stories anyway. Overall, I enjoyed this break from my normal mysteries.

I love Christmas-themed romance anthologies, so this was a must-buy as soon as I saw it. Unfortunately, it wasn't worth the money. I get the impression that at least two of the authors just scribbled any old thing, never mind about the quality, just to get their names on the cover and a few more bucks in their royalty account.

Fern Michaels is an author whose name I've seen about on book-covers a lot, but never actually read. Now, I know to avoid her like the plague. If this is any kind of example of her usual work, I don't know how she gets published. She needs to go back to basics and learn about writing style. The novella feels amateurish in the extreme. The characters are flat and uninspiring, the plot is unconvincing and the narration made it extremely difficult to keep reading - in fact, it took me about four separate attempts to finish the novella. Point of view jumps about all over the place, including into the heads of minor characters completely irrelevant to the story - has Michaels ever heard of strict POV? Apart from being much easier for readers to follow than her head-hopping is, it also allows readers to get to know and actually *care* about the hero and heroine. As it is, the characters did nothing for me, and nor did the boring story.

Beverley Barton can do better than this; I know, because I've read other work by her. The Ghost of Christmas Past is horribly clichéd and unbelievably poor. The hero, Katie, still stuck in the early stages of grief for her dead husband after four years (and we're expected to believe at the same time that she's a successful career woman - not likely if she's at that degree of barely-functioning) is too good to be true and extremely irritating. If I were Mack, I'd have thrown her out into the snow to freeze after her second monologue about how wonderful Darrell was/how terrible it is not to celebrate Christmas (and this from the hypocrite who's running away from celebrating Christmas) and the inane TMI about her family, the family she loves so much she's escaping from them. If there was romance in this novella, I missed it. Those two were incompatible in the extreme and what he saw in her I couldn't work out.

As for Joanne Fluke's story, if I'd wanted a fistful of recipes I'd have looked them up on the internet. There were more recipes than story in this novella, and most of the rest was about Hannah, the cook, and all the nonentities in her life, who all presumably appear in Fluke's other novels but were strangers to me and will remain so. Julie and Matt's love story might have been interesting, if we'd ever actually been given it. The story takes up when they've already kissed for the first time. We get a few more kisses, a lot of over-the-top kid-interruptus (including a completely ridiculous, unbelievable misunderstanding - and, by the way, does Fluke know the difference between an email and an IM?), and then suddenly they're proposing to each other. Where was the romance? Sorry, but in between all the recipes I missed out on it. Stick to cooking, Fluke, and don't write romance novels.

Finally, at last a novella worth reading was Shirley Jump's Twelve Days. Office romance, secret Santa and UST, plus a decent dollop of Christmas spirit and fun. I did enjoy this one, and I wish it had been a full-length novel instead of the final novella in this otherwise dismal and boring collection.

This book's now going to the recycle pile, which is a shame in respect of Jump's story, which deserves re-reading - but the rest of it does not deserve space on my bookshelf.

This book is 4 romance novellas by 4 different authors. Romance novels are not what I usually read, but the only reason I read this book is because one of the novellas is by Joanne Fluke, my favorite author. Joanne Fluke's novella deserved 5 shining stars, but the other 3 novellas only deserved 1 star. When I averaged that out, that came to 2 stars for the entire book.

I feel really bad giving less than 5 stars to anything that has Joanne Fluke's name on it. Her writing is so awesome, so cozy, so good. Her part, like I said in the above paragraph, did deserve 5 stars.

The other 3 novellas, however, were horrible. There was cussing, profanity, sex, mention or hint of sex or body parts, and the "plots" and writing, to me, were not good. I saw no talent in the writing. I just saw pages of cussing and writing about sex. I can't believe this holds people's interests.

In Joanne Fluke's novella, however, there was no cussing, profanity, sex, body parts, etc. And the plot was good, and it was obvious that the writing came from a very talented writer.

I was very disappointed in this book. (Except for Joanne Fluke's novella.) As far as the other 3 authors, this is the first time I've ever read anything by any of them, and I know I will NEVER, EVER, EVER read anything by any of them ever again. I have no interest in reading pages and pages of profanity and sex. That does not hold my interest. How boring and disgusting.

Here is a breakdown of the 4 novellas -

"The Christmas Stocking" by Fern Michaels

1 Star

Gus Moss, from Los Angeles, CA comes home to Virginia at Christmas to open his dad's Christmas tree farm back up. Amy Baran from Philadelphia, PA comes home to VA to help her mom out.

"Ghost of Christmas Past" by Beverly Barton

1 Star

This was the absolute worst of all the novellas. Katie has a wreck in the Tennessee mountains and is snowed in. Mack is also snowed in. Sex, profanity, sex. No talent, no charm. I absolutely could not believe this novella got published.

"Twelve Desserts of Christmas" by Joanne Fluke

5 Stars

This is a cozy romance novella. Julie got stuck having duty over the holidays at a boarding school. She had to take care of the girls. Another teacher was in charge of the boys. They were the only 2 staff members there over the holidays. Since the cook was not required to stay, that meant the 2 teachers were responsible for the meals. I will not say who or how, as to not ruin the book, but they ended up with some cozy Christmas desserts! Lots of them! This novella was so fun and cozy.

And even though this novella is a romance (not a mystery, as are the other Joanne Fluke novels), I enjoyed it just as much as I did all her mysteries. It featured the same characters. This novella goes to prove that I do not judge a book by its genre. This novella is a romance, but I am still giving it 5 stars. This novella also goes to prove that romance novels do not have to be sex and profanity in order to be good. This romance novella was good, entertaining, sweet, cozy, and awesome.

"Twelve Days" by Shirley Jump

1 Star

This novella was a reminder of why I don't normally read romance novels. This was the 2nd worse of the 4 novellas. It was getting close to Christmas, and the company did secret Santas. Natalie was a secret Santa to someone and she went sexual on him. Who is bold enough to do that to someone at a company?

As a whole, this book was horrible. (Except for Joanne Fluke's part). Unless you like boring and repetitive profanity and sex or hints of sex, with no talent or charm or plot, then I do not recommend this book.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 18 reviews  3.8 out of 5 stars