Funnier than you'd expect, and much better than the movie. ( )

Luther and Nora Krank’s only child Blair just left for Peru with the Peace Corps. Facing a Christmas without their daughter at home, Luther decides that he’d prefer to skip Christmas altogether and convinces Nora to go on a cruise instead. Planning this short vacation takes much of Luther and Nora’s energy as they do their best to avoid their boisterous, holiday-spirited friends and neighbors.

What follows is a light-hearted story, unbelievable and sometimes even quite silly, but, at other times, delightfully funny. Grisham’s short Christmas tale is one that provides that often needed fantasy of how to avoid the mad trappings of the holiday season. ( )

Nice fun holiday book to get you into the christmas spirit i guess. Allready known Grisham has a great writing style and can tell a story I think this was done as a little fun side project. ( )

One of the worst books ever written, from which an equally horrible movie was made. Skip this one... ( )

Having never read anything by John Grisham before, and not having anything to do one fine Christmastide season at my parents' house, I discovered this book on their shelves. It didn't see to be too long a commitment to read, so I read it, and I enjoyed it.

The book, later adapted into the Christmas film Christmas with the Kranks features a modern-day Scrooge, Luther Krank, who, after his Christmas-loving daughter moves out, figures out exactly how much the Krank household spends celebrating Jesus and Santa and Frosty each year. The amount shocks him, and he realizes that that amount applied to say, a vacation, could make for a pretty nice cruise or other non-Christmas celebration. He then tries to get his wife on board, to which she finally agrees.

The Kranks are bombarded by all the normal Christmas peddlers, of trees and whatnot, and word spreads fast when its discovered that the Kranks are not celbrating Christmas this year.

The entire neighborhood tries in vain to repossess them with the Christmas spirit, but nothing seems to work, tactics loving, harsh, or otherwise. That is, until they get surprising news from their daughter: She's coming home for Christmas, plus one!

Now it's a mad dash to give their daughter the best Christmas they can manage, and the entire neighborhood must join together in brotherly love and good cheer.

It's a touching and comical story, and from what I've heard, deviates from most of what Grisham writes. If you're looking for something light to read for Christmas, and Lemony Snicket's Christmas books just aren't your cup of tea, then this may definitely be a book for you. ( )