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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Delightfully funny, uplifting holiday fare!, December 15, 2005
The Eight Dates of Hanukkah by Laurie Graff is a fun and unusual story about a committment-phobic, workaholic woman. While working late on the first night of Hanukkah, trying avoid her boyfriend's proposal, she gets hit on the head by a menorah during a botched burglery attempt and falls into a coma. As her family rallies around her, she slips into singles fantasyland where she must date a different quirky guy on each night of Hanukkah. In the process, she learns valuable lessons about love, life and appreciating what (and who) she has. Although I am not Jewish, this was my favorite story in the anthology. I enjoyed accompanying Nicki on her journey of self-discovery while she was in the coma, and found that her spiritual awakening was something I could relate to and apply to my own life.
Carrie Pilby's New Year's Resolution by Caren Lissner features a 20 year old intellectual genius who is socially inept. Her resolutions for January are to break out of her unsocialized predictament and to meet people who are more like herself, specifically a boyfriend. She attempts to "normalize" herself, with the help of a therapist and a delightful friend named Kara, who provide a refreshing balance to Carrie's issues with not fitting in and being different. While this story had very likable characters and an interesting concept, I was disappointed by its non-ending. The issues set forth in the plot were unresolved and Carrie was left pretty much in the same predicament as she started in, and it would have been more satisfying to have the loose ends tied up into a solid conclusion.
Emma Townsend Saves Christmas by Melanie Murray is the funniest story in the collection. Emma is now a sophisticated New York lawyer determined to distance herself from her country upbringing on a Christmas tree farm in rural Vermont. Instead of heading to Aspen this Christmas with her upper-class boyfriend who is about to propose the her, Emma reluctantly returns to her hometown because she feels pressured not to disappoint her parents. She arrives to find that they've abandoned her to spend Christmas in Jamaica. She feel obligated to represent her parents in the town's hokey Christmas Faire, and with the help of her Nana and her childhood crush, she revitalizes the celebration for all, and rediscovers the charm of her roots. Although a highly enjoyable read, I found this story to be the least believable and realistic of the three.
I could envision each of these short stories being featured in the holiday issue of a woman's magazine. Very entertaining, and hilariously written, they are sure to inspire the spirit of the season and chase away the humbugs!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
three fun chick lit holiday novellas, November 2, 2005
"The Eight Dates of Hanukkah" by Laurie Graff. Events planner Nicki Heller believes the first day of Hanukkah is God's vehicle to test her. As a kid, her new doll had its head twisted off; her marriage ended on another first day; and now Mark Baum proposes, but when she says no he drops her. That same night a thief enters her shop leading to a menorah crashing on her head. Unconscious Nicki believes she is trapped in Menorahville where she goes on a date from hell every night of the festival of lights.
"Carrie Pilby's New Year resolution" by Caren Lissner. Having graduated from Harvard before she turned twenty, but receiving no social education in the process, Carrie Pilby vows to attend two events a week, one social and the other professional. She also swears she will talk to two strangers at these events, hopefully a male and if asked out will say yes. The genius actually has a friend Kara who she confides in that she thinks of returning to college so she can gain the social skills she never learned the first time around.
"Emma Townsend Saves Christmas" by Melanie Murray. When she left her parents' Maine Christmas tree farm for New York City, Emma Townsend vowed to never return for the holidays. Yet Emma heads home thinking of White Christmas when Rosemary Clooney gave up Manhattan for Vermont. To her shock her parents are going on vacation to Jamaica leaving it to her with the help of her high school sweetheart Tim Latch to save Christmas.
These three holiday novellas are fun chick lit tales that will bring good cheer to sub-genre fans.
Harriet Klausner
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Two of the stories are good, December 28, 2005
I really enjoyed the first two stories in this collection: The Eight Dates of Hanukkah and Carrie Pilby's New Year's Resolution.
The Eight Dates of Hanukkah, written by Laurie Graff, is about a self-sufficient NYC career woman named Nicki. Nicki keeps putting off her boyfriend's proposals of marriage. Then, after getting struck on the head by a robber, Nicki goes into a coma. In her coma, she enters the world of Menorahville, which is like NYC but with different street names: Dreidel Way instead of Broadway, and Latke Lane instead of West End Avenue. The only way to get out of Menorahville is to marry one of its bachelors...but none of the men want to get married when there are so many desperate women willing to date them. It's an interesting story of the tables getting turned; Nicki had run a dating agency in real life and never understood the difficulties her clients had finding the right man.
The second story, Carrie Pilby's New Year's Resolution, is great. I loved the novel Carrie Pilby, and this story picks up where the novel left off. Carrie is a genius with no social skills, who has hilarious thoughts but finds it very hard to fit into the world around her. Carrie resolves to find a guy who's like her, but it's harder than it seems, even as she attends "intellectual events" (e.g., a conference on media bias) and tries to flirt with soup kitchen volunteers.
The third story, Emma Townsend Saves Christmas, didn't do it for me. Emma is a selfish young woman who wants to marry rich and drags her feet about going home for Christmas. She and her brother both want to stay in New York, but for reasons that are never explained, Emma ends up going home to Vermont. She's resolved not to help out with the annual "Christmas Faire," but her parents leave town for a Jamaica vacation and she's stuck helping out. Emma was so selfish and shallow that it was hard to relate to her, the men in the story are scarcely developed and Emma's transformation at the end is hard to believe. Also, the scenes in Vermont, although they are supposed to be heartwarming and quirky, are dull and stereotyped.
I'd still recommend the volume though, for the first two stories.
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