Twelve Days of Christmas by Debbie Macomber
Introduction
I don’t say this lightly, but Twelve Days of Christmas by Debbie Macomber might be my favorite book of hers. It combines 3 of my favorite things: Blogging, Christmas, and Enemies to Lovers Romance. What’s not to love? Keep reading to see what this book is all about.
About the Book
Friendly and bubbly, Julia Padden likes nearly everyone, but her standoffish neighbor, Cain Maddox, presents a particular challenge. No matter how hard she’s tried to be nice, Cain rudely rebuffs her at every turn, preferring to keep to himself. But when Julia catches Cain stealing her newspaper from the lobby of their apartment building, that’s the last straw. She’s going to break through Cain’s Scrooge-like exterior the only way she knows how: by killing him with kindness.
To track her progress, Julia starts a blog called The Twelve Days of Christmas. Her first attempts to humanize Cain are far from successful. Julia brings him homemade Christmas treats and the disagreeable grinch won’t even accept them. Meanwhile, Julie’s blog becomes an online sensation, as an astonishing number of people start following her adventures. Julia continues to find ways to express kindness and, little by little, chips away at Cain’s gruff façade to reveal the caring man underneath. Unbelievably, Julia feels herself falling for Cain—and she suspects that he may be falling for her as well. But as the popularity of her blog continues to grow, Julia must decide if telling Cain the truth about having chronicled their relationship to the rest of the world is worth risking their chance at love. (from Amazon.com)
My Thoughts
Twelve Days of Christmas is everything I look for in a sweet Christmas romance. Engaging characters, a little bit of romantic tensions, and plenty of scenes filled with Christmas Magic.
Julia is a young woman living in Seattle who fills her time with many things. She works, she volunteers, and she plays piano at her church. Her job at Macy’s ok ok, but she’s love to find something in the social media field. This holiday season she things she might have found her chance. She’ll complete with another candidate to create a blog. Whoever gets more hits and comments by the end of the competition will win the position.
The only problem is that Julia doesn’t have any ideas. While talking on the phone with her best friend, she begins complaining about her neighbor across the hall. He’s rude and a newspaper thief! So after some discussion, Julia decides to go along with her friends suggestion. She’s going to try being kind to her neighbor to see if she can get him to lighten up, all while documenting it on her blog.
Meanwhile, Cain (also known as Ebenezer on Julia’s blog) has his own issues going on. He comes off as so serious because he’s dealt with a lot of loss in his life, from his parents to a former romantic partner. He’s scared of getting hurt.
This book had everything I love in it: Christmas, Starbucks, Friend to lovers tension (although not technically lovers since this is a clean romance lol). Some of the scenes where Julia was just being a normal, nice human and Cain was distrusting of her were so funny. Julia was the Christmas angel that he really needed in his life, to be honest.
A bonus factor is that Cain’s grandfather, Bernie, is a main character in the story and helps Julia with her kindness project. What will happen when Cain finds out? Well, you’ll just have to read and find out. If you love Christmas romances, you’ll certainly love this one by Debbie Macomber. It’s so sweet and made my heart incredibly happy.
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Do you like Christmas books? Check out some more of my Christmas book reviews here!
xo Marian
