A Stockingful of Joy (Anthology 4-in-1)

** "The Snow Rose" by Susan King. Bad, bad, bad. A paint-by-numbers historical romance. The writing itself didn't suck, which is why it got an extra star. But mix the 3 most cliched plots in historical romances--a heroine who's being forced to marry against her will, feuding clans, and being snowbound. Throw in a "quirk"--a cat named dog. Make sure the heroine's a saint--add a houseful of orphans that the heroine takes care of. And then kind of throw it all in a book without trying to actually make any of it, you know, make sense. Frex, the heroine has no qualms about asking the hero's family to attack the castle to take it away from her evil uncle, BUT she won't marry the hero because there's a 50/50 chance her uncle will renew the show more feud because of it. And she can't stay with the orphans because her little cottage isn't big enough, so she worries about them constantly--but it never occurs to her to move into their large house. And.... ARGH. This story feels like it was written by a committee of about a dozen people who weren't talking to each other. Oddly, a couple of the Amazon reviewers cited this as their favorite of the anthology.
***** "The Best Husband Money Can Buy" by Mary Jo Putney. There's a reason why MJP is famous. She knows what she's doing. :) The heroine unexpectly comes into a huge inheritance and decides that what she wants most to do with it is to have a home and family of her own. And luckily enough, the man she's had a crush on since childhood is single and in need of funds. She's smart, and there were so many times in this book where the cliches could have taken over, but didn't. In fact, in response to a secondary plot about a troubled marriage, the heroine asks "don't they ever talk to each other?" I laughed aloud. Excellent example of a story that fits the novella length--it didn't feel incomplete at all.
*** "A Light in the Window" by Justine Dare. Pretty standard Christmas novella, with a trio of orphans (the hero, heroine, and her young nephew), and a *maybe* Christmas angel. Magic of the Christmas season healing wounded hearts & all that. Not horrible, not great either.
*** "Boxing Day" by Jill Barnett. This might have been a pretty good story, of a 40-year-old spinster in 1893 NYC and a 32-year-old boxer, but the story kept getting interrupted by laundry lists of "this is how things were in 1893 NYC." It's like the author did a bunch of research, and damn it, it was hard work, so she was going to cram all of it in whether it fit the story or not. show less

Christmas bookbox; four nice christmas stories,spanning different time periods and locales

Loved the Putney story. The rest I can't remember.