Novelist Debbie Macomber Is No Stranger To Hallmark
Debbie Macomber is a prolific romance novelist with over 150 books to her credit. Unlike other cheesy five and dime romance stories, Macomber weaves clean tales brimming with heart and depth. Her Cedar Cove books have been adapted to a Hallmark television series, and six of her novels have been made into Hallmark Christmas movies:
Twelve Days of Christmas was published back in 2016, and it's one of Macomber's best. It has a Hallmark vibe, so it's a mystery why Hallmark hasn't seized the story instead of recycling so many of their same old plots.
Twelve Days Of Christmas Plot Summary
Julia Padden is always smiling, bubbly, and chatty, which rubs the Scrooge-like neighbor in her apartment complex the wrong way. Gruff and unfriendly, Cain Maddox rudely rebuffs all of Julia's attempts at being a kind neighbor.
When Julia catches Cain stealing her morning newspaper, she decides she's had enough. As she vents to her best friend about the incident, Cammie suggests Julia turn the experience into a blog. After all, Julia doesn't want to work at Macy's forever--she has her eye on a social media job, but she needs an edge over her competition.
Julia heeds Cammie's advice and starts a blog she titles, The Twelve Days of Christmas. Her goal is to spend the twelve days before Christmas killing Cain with kindness and chronicling the experiment in the blog. The blog quickly takes off, and Julia is flooded with encouragement and advice from readers who hope kindness will have a positive effect on the neighbor Julia calls "Ebeneezer."
Something unexpected happens in the process. As Julia chisels through Cain's hard and crusty exterior, she finds a good man underneath. She's more than a little shocked to find herself falling for him, but if he learns about her blog, will it destroy their budding relationship?
A Moral To The Story
Twelve Days of Christmas is a light-hearted, easy read you can't put down until you find out how things wind up in the end, yet it is so much deeper.
What would happen if we made a point, not just during the holidays, but all year long to kill people with kindness?
Like Julia, we might all learn that kindness doesn't only have a positive impact on the receiver--it changes us in the process, too.
It's easy to be kind to nice people. It takes a LOT more effort, determination, and self-control to be nice to those who have done nothing to deserve it. But, isn't that what Christmas is all about? Jesus came to redeem humanity from sin, even though we didn't deserve it. Our response should be to extend the same mercy and grace to the Grinches in our lives so they, too, have the chance to be transformed by love and unmerited favor. Macomber doesn't mention religion in this novel, but she doesn't have to for the reader to grasp the correlation.
People aren't usually mean by nature. When you dig deeper, you often find that a bad experience or a traumatic event turned them into what they are. When people are hurt, they build a fortress around their hearts, and it takes a great deal of patience and understanding to tear down their defenses. As the cliché aptly states, hurting people hurt people. What they don't realize is that in shutting people out, they also barricade themselves from feeling emotions, which makes their lives empty. We see this with Cain.
What Makes Twelve Days Of Christmas SO GOOD?
Christmas novels are a dime a dozen, and many of them are downright hokey. This one isn't. Macomber is highly skilled in developing her characters. As you read, these fictional people become so three-dimensional you step into the book and into their psyches. You feel what they feel. Their struggles seem like your own.
People read to escape, and this book lets you do it. It is so good that once you finish, you can't start a new book right away because you still feel like you're living in this one.
Macomber is also adept at giving each character a unique voice. While all authors shift from character to character, the voice you hear in your head often sounds the same. Not in this novel! As Macomber introduces different personalities, you hear all the separate voices.
If you're in the mood for an engrossing Christmas novel, Twelve Days of Christmas is it!
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Get Macomber's Latest Book, Dear Santa
Maybe you'd prefer borrowing Macomber's latest book, Dear Santa, from the library, but last I checked, my local library had a 10-week waiting list for this release! If you'd like to read it before Christmas, you can find it here:
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