Customer Reviews

One Week In December

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This book was chosen for our book club as our December book. We all enjoyed it very much. We could all identify with the characters,but we each identified with a different one. I hope the author writes a follow-up book so we can find out what happened to the main characters, which to us is the "signature" of a good book.

Becca Rowan feels all alone, but her loneliness is compounded whenever she sees her sixteen year old niece, Rain. She knows she made a deal with her older brother David and his wife Naomi to raise Rain, but now she wants to tell her biological daughter the truth. Still Becca also knows if she does she will destroy her family as she acquiesced as a teen giving birth that her sibling and his spouse would raise her daughter as their own and telling her the truth when Rain turned twenty-one.

During the annual family Christmas gathering, she plans to tell Rain the truth and to bring her daughter home. When she does, all hell breaks out. She feels remorseful wondering how selfish she was to break her promise while her brother and his wife are irate and feeling betrayed and Rain is upset and confused. Only the next door neighbor Alex provides her some comfort and advice as Becca tries to repair the disaster she caused.

This is an engaging family drama although the key catalyst in causing the trauma Becca comes across extremely selfish and shallow rather than emotionally disturbed. The rest of the Rowan brood are developed to the point of being understood by readers in the way they react to Becca. Interesting and well written, fans will enjoy this contemporary tale but feel disappointed that Becca's mental anguish was not developed into crippling phobic loneliness way beyond her self-centered need.

Harriet Klausner

I loved this book. I enjoyed the story and the wonderful characters. I found myself wanting to read and read just to get to the next part. Holly Chamberlin is a wonderful story teller. You will lose yourself in her books and the different complexies of her characters. I recommend this book and Tuscan Holiday. I am looking forward to her next book.

The characters and setting were interesting and well done, but I found it way too pedantic. If you don't mind books that preach at you , you will enjoy this book. That being said, I didn't hate it, but would have liked it a lot better if the messages had been conveyed in a more subtle manner.

The premise is intriguing: 32-year old single woman visits her family at the holidays, intending to break the news to her 16-year-old niece that they are in fact mother and daughter. The set-up is appealing - numerous family members with problems of their own, converging at the holidays. Unfortunately the dialogue is clunky - try reading it aloud - and the approach is entirely too earnest. The budding romance feels thrown in as an afterthought. The characters are stereotypes - workaholic single woman with a horrible secret in her past, wise grandma, saintly sister-in-law who adopted the hapless infant. I have no idea why Becca waited until she was 32 to decide to "reclaim" her daughter. Maybe because she wanted to cause grief to her family, from whom she has become quite isolated. I sympathize with her predicament, but nothing about this character made me want to cheer for her. There is a good story here, and lots of issues are raised, but that's about all.