No Life

My reading tear continues having started and completed Comfort And Joy by Kristin Hannah yesterday. This was my first read by Hannah, and I rather enjoyed her writing style. I might have to think about picking up more by her (suggestions welcome).

Comfort And Joy is one of those hard cover "gift size" books and clocks in at about 240 pages. It tells the story of Joy Candellaro, a woman who is not having a very Merry Christmas. She's recently divorced. Her husband left her for another woman. Bad enough, but that other woman is Joy's younger sister and Joy caught them in bed together. Joy's bed. The bed in the house she shared with her husband.

So Joy is obviously not a happy woman. Then dear old sis stops by and tells her that not only is she marrying Thom, but she's pregnant!

Joy flips out. She leaves her sister standing in her driveway, hops in her car and drives for the airport. There she gets a seat on a charter plane heading to a tiny town in British Columbia called Hope. Joy wants to hide, and Hope seems like a good place to do it.

Minor problem though - the plane crashes. Joy miraculously walks away and comes across The Comfort Fishing Lodge. A very attractive Irishman named Daniel is fixing up the place to sell it. His ex-wife used to run it, and when she was killed in an accident, Daniel found himself the sole custodian to their son, Bobby. Bobby misses his mother desperately, and does not have a good relationship with his father. Bobby checks Joy in as a guest, and she is soon a big part of their lives.

Comfort And Joy only works if the reader is willing to go with the Hallmark feel of the story. Suspending your disbelief is required quite a bit. But if you're looking for a Christmas-y read featuring holiday magic - then this is your book. I highly recommend it as a Christmas Eve read, and I'm sort of sorry I didn't save it for then. Oh well.

The only thing that doesn't work for me is the sister and husband stuff. This is an uplifting story, and given it's holiday setting, the forgiveness theme shouldn't come as a shock. Still, they're sisters. Sisters do not "steal" each others' husbands. It just ain't done. Frankly, Joy is a better person than I am - because I just can't figure out how she can get past it. I even have two sisters of my own and I still couldn't understand how Joy could forgive her. We now have proof - Wendy is an awful person.

But I liked this story. It's very women's fiction-y, but it has a happy ending - so it goes down easy for the romance reader in me. It's gotten mixed reviews over at Amazon, but I found my first Hannah experience quite enjoyable. She can certainly write.