I *love* Christmas -- so I was very excited when I was given the opportunity to review the book The Nativity Collection by Robert Morgan -- a gift book consisting of 6 short stories.
I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but based on this book's beautiful cover picture, I had high expectations for the book. The pictures inside, however, were too frequent and at times only remotely relevant to the story. I found them to be a distraction and would have preferred a well selected picture or two per story.
The first story, "Ollie", was one that captured my interest and tugged at my heart strings. On Christmas Eve a family finds that their car, which was filled with their Christmas presents, has been stolen. The events that follow make the Christmas a memorable one for everyone involved and teach a valuable lesson about love.
If I were reviewing just the story"Ollie", I would recommend the book whole heartedly, however other stories in the collection could not compare to this one. Many of the stories I felt I could take or leave. In my opinion, the story "Over My Dead Body" felt more like a bad joke than a Christmas story.
Since I would only want to read two out of the six stories over again I can't give my full recommendation of this book. If "Ollie" ever becomes available as an illustrated children's book I would happily recommend it.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book through Booksneeze.com in exchange for my honest review.
Interesting. Beautiful cover.
ReplyDeleteWere the stories by different authors? Ollie sounds very good.
ReplyDeleteJodi, it felt like the stories were by different authors, but they were all by the same author. Robert Morgan is a pastor who writes one short Christmas story each year to share with his congregation. This book has 6 of those stories.
ReplyDeleteHopefully you can read "Ollie". I read it to my husband just last night and he really enjoyed it too.
well, that's good to know!
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