This is meant to be a cutesy Christmassy second chances
novella which didn’t work for us at all.
Poinsettia (Tia) Collins unexpectedly inherits a
Christmas tree farm from a distant relative. For someone who hates Christmas this
is rather ironical but Tia swallows her Christmas-hate to work the farm. One of
Tia’s top reasons for hating Christmas is that twenty years back, during a
Christmas party, someone whispered in her ears that her then girlfriend, Meg
Bartlett, was cheating on her. Tia dumped Meg during the party without
letting Meg say anything in her defence. In the interim, Meg had set out to
become an actress, but her career has practically ended. She decides to
surprise her parents with a surprise visit but is instead surprised herself to
find them gone on a cruise. While wandering around, she hears mewling from a
letter box and finds a tiny kitty crying in the cold. She walks down the
driveway to the house to find warmth for the wee thing. So, twenty years
thence, Meg is suddenly on Tia’s doorstep with a tiny abandoned kitty.
Kitty-caring, Christmas-bonding and finding way back to each other follows.
What didn’t work for us at all is Tia. Tia and Meg were
together for four years but on word from an outsider (Megs purported best
friend, Faith) was enough for Tia to suspect Meg, accuse her and dump her. That
is reprehensible. After that, she had a relationship with Dani and wasted two years
worth of Dani’s emotions by holding back from her and remaining closed to her
finally causing Dani to leave. And Tia feels that she is the victim in both
these instances. Even when she meets Meg again, first she doesn’t allow Meg to
clear things and then she doesn’t even believe Meg when Meg says she’d never
cheated on Tia. Instead, Tia tracks down Faith and asks her whether she’d lied
twenty years back. It is only when Faith admits to having lied that Tia accepts
that she was in the wrong with Meg. Tia makes a very, very poor human being and
partner. Meg, on the other hand, is quite wonderful. Which just makes us sad
about Meg’s lot in life.
Tia killed the book for us and this is one of the few DNFs
in our list.
