Nailing Jello to a Tree: Book Review- Merry Christmas Stories

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Book Review- Merry Christmas Stories

Recently I was given the opportunity to review the book, Merry Christmas Stories, by Jeff Spalsbury. I was very excited to start reading this book, because Christmas is one of my favorite times. Probably my favorite thing about the book is that it has 25 stories, perfect to read with your sweetheart every night in December. The book has a wide collection, including love stories, ghost stories, science fiction and more.

The first story in the book is “Santa’s Missing”. I really enjoyed this story, even though I found a lot of it to be predictable, and somewhat unrealistic. The idea behind the story was nice. This was my favorite story in the book.

Excerpt of Santa’s Missing

As I continued reading, my first problem was that I had to read more than one story a day, because I had a deadline for this review. I think I would have enjoyed the stories more if they were spread out. Reading them so close together made it obvious to me that the majority of the stories had the same underlying theme- someone is lonely, or depressed on Christmas, they find love and everything is good. Honestly, after a while it bored me. However, a lot of people really enjoy the feel good love story type, so I can definitely see where people would enjoy this book….. just don’t read it all at once Winking smile

I also felt that my teen agers might like it, although the emphasis on having to have love to be happy is a little heavy. I’d have to talk with them before letting them read it to get clear the source of real love- God.

All in all, it’s a good book to have to pull out at Christmas time, maybe leave it by the toilet to read, or on the coffee table- but please don’t move it back and forth! LOL Smile

Jeff R. Spalsbury also writes science fiction and western novels. Avalon Press published his western novel, Hunt the Hunter, in December 2010 and the second novel in his Hunt series, The Hunted Return is scheduled to be published in July 2012, also by Avalon. His science fiction novel, SPACE DREAM ONE: That Other’s May Live will be published as an eBook in October 2011.

Spalsbury taught a class on the importance of using humor in the classroom at California State University in Fresno. He is also a former library director and professor at Porterville College, Porterville, CA.

To learn more about Spalsbury’s books, visit his website at www.JeffRSpalsbury.com. His books can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Black Rose Writing or various online eBook sellers, including the Apple iPad, Sony Nook, etc.

I would like to thank TLC Book Tours for allowing me to be part of this blog tour Smile .