This Christmas: The best gifts lie in the company you keep.
Written by Jane Green, Jennifer Coburn and Liz Ireland
Narrated by Laurel Lefkow
2.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Vacation by Jane Green: When her husband's job takes him away from home indefinitely, a restless suburban wife and mother must confront Christmas alone - and decide whether she's better off that way.
The Second Wife of Reilly by Jennifer Coburn: A newlywed is haunted by thoughts of her husband's first wife - and comes up with an unusual plan to cure herself in time for Christmas...
Mistletoe and Holly by Liz Ireland: Longing to fit into her family's picture perfect holiday celebration, a young woman finally brings home the perfect boyfriend - only to find that nothing is as she expected.
Infused with the hopes and dreams of the season, these entertaining and exquisitely written stories will inspire your Christmas spirit and will stay with you all year long.
Jane Green
A former feature writer for the Daily Express in the UK, Jane Green took a leap of faith when she left, in 1996, to freelance and work on a novel. Seven months later, there was a bidding war for her first book, Straight Talking, the saga of a single career girl looking for the right man. The novel was a hit in England, and Green was an overnight success. She's since written many bestselling novels including The Beach House, Second Chance, Jemima J, and Tempting Fate. Most weekends see her cooking for a minimum of twenty people in her home in Westport, Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and their blended family. When she is not writing, cooking, filling her house with friends and looking after their animals, she is usually thanking the Lord for caffeine-filled energy drinks.
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Reviews for This Christmas
6 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I RECEIVED THIS AS A FREE BOOK TO REVIEW, AND WAS DISAPPOINTED TO SEE THAT IT WAS A RE-PUBLICATION OF THE THREE AUTHORS' CHRISTMAS STORIES FROM 2005. I HAD ALREADY READ THE STORIES, BUT RE-READ TO GIVE OTHER READERS BENEFIT OF THE REVIEW. THIS WAS THE SECOND TIME I HAD THIS EXPERIENCE WITH BOOK OFFERINGS. REMEMBER, LIBRARY THING, YOU HAVE AVID READERS AT THIS WEBSITE AND REPRINTS AND REPACKAGING OF OLDER STORIES ARE THE PITS. THE STORIES ARE ENTERTAINING AND WELL-WRITTEN, BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO GET NEW MATERIAL. CYNCIE
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program, but it isn't exactly an early review since the book came out a few years ago. I guess this is a reprint. Anyway, "This Christmas" is a collection of 3 "feel good" holiday short stories. Each story is entertaining and enjoyable and I would have liked it if they were three complete novels. I've read most of Jane Green's novels, and her story "Vacation" lived up to her usual standard of funny, but real stories. It tells the story of a couple who have grown apart and are on the verge of divorce. Being that it is Jane Green, you know the story comes to an uplifting ending.The second story, "The Second Wife of Reilly" by Jennifer Coburn was good, but my least favorite of the three. I felt like there was a lot going on that I had somehow missed. When I finished and realized it was kind of an afterward to Jennifer Coburn's novel, "The Wife of Reilly" it made more sense and made me want to read that full novel. The third story, "Mistletoe and Holly" was my favorite. I could easily see it becoming a holiday movie. It was real and funny and romantic in all the right places. I would absolutely like to read more from Liz Ireland. Overall the collection makes for nice, relaxing holiday reading when you need a few moments to relax.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Christmas is a fun collection of holiday-based love stories by authors Jane Green, Jennifer Coburn and Liz Ireland. These ladies know their business and show it well in each of these surprising stories. Vacation, by Green, is the tale of a couple at odds with each other and the pressures of a stale relationship. Frustrated and fed up, Sarah forces Eddie into a separation, but each learns the value of their marriage, and changes are made, before coming to a final decision about their future.The Second Wife of Reilly, written by Coburn, tells the story of a young widowed mother, embarking on a second marriage. Sarah's relationship with Reilly seems picture-perfect, so why is she so concerned that his ex-wife will try to win him back? Sarah and her pals come up with an outrageous plan to find her a new love, before she realizes what she's lost. It's a humourous story, but affecting too, as Sarah delves deeper into her past to find the real reasons for her worries.The compilation's final chapter, Mistletoe and Holly, authored by Ireland, is pure entertainment. Holly has a handsome, successful boyfriend to take home to her family for Christmas, but things aren't quite what they seem once she arrives. Ireland keeps her reader guessing until the very end: will Holly make a stand to keep her model man or listen to reason and follow her old friend, Isaac down lover's lane?I found all three stories truly fresh and enjoyable. Though they are old stories, repackaged to prompt interest in other works by these authors, they've lost nothing in the transition. Highly recommended for a cozy holiday weekend.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not their best effort! I was really unhappy with this book. I normally love anything that Jane Green has participated in, but this book just did not live up to my standards.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Includes a cute follow-up to The Wife of Reilly in this book of short stories.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this book very much. I always like her novels and will read more of her in the future.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I usually love Jane Green, but all of the stories in this book are downers. During the holidays, I want something heartwarming, not stories about bad marriages. The cover is misleading, it looks like a Christmas card. They could Title this "This Christmas:You will be depressed"
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nice variety of short romantic stories with Christmas as the uniting theme.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5When I requested this book from the early reviewers program I did not notice there were stories by authors in addition to Jane Green. Therefore, I was disappointed to find Ms Green's story so short as I have enjoyed her longer novels. The story in this book did not correspond in style to what I have read of her writing previously. This offering was pure fluff and even the holiday setting didn't make it more interesting or appealing. Unfortunantly, the same can be said of the other two holiday tales. My advice is to save your time and skip this book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I was really excited to get the chance to read a holiday story this year. I am not the hugest fan of holiday fiction but every once in a while I get in the mood. Maybe it’s because I needed an extra jolt of holiday spirit or something so when this was sent to me for review I squealed with glee. Awesome, just what I needed. However, upon opening it, it wasn’t quite what I had hoped for. Why? Well the stories totally stressed me out!I’ll break it down for you, this here is a collection of three short stories. One each by the above named authors. It appears as though they were all originally published back in 2005 so I think they may have slapped a new cover on this and called it a new book so don’t be alarmed if you’ve read these stories before. I however, have not so I wasn’t too disappointed to have been given it although I was surprised by the copyright date.The first story was probably the best of the bunch. Jane Green’s is entitled “Vacation” and it is about a wife, Sarah Evans, who has become disillusioned with her life. Not the newest story out there but one I could get behind. She loves her children but she misses the satisfaction she used to get from her job and her life in her city and she is not happy with how her and her husband had grown apart. His job sends him to Chicago and this gives them a much needed “vacation” from each other to decide if they should make their marriage work, just in time for the holidays. What was good about this short story was you could empathize with Sarah and her plight and if you are a Jane Green fan (which I am) you’d want to read this one. The second story was by Jennifer Coburn, a new to me author, and was entitled “The Second Wife of Reilly”. From what I can gather Coburn has written a novel called “The Wife of Reilly”. I haven’t read it and I probably won’t because the second wife was vapid and obsessed with the first wife. It was the holidays, she was 6 months into her new marriage to a great guy and was so obsessed with his first wife that the book couldn’t talk about anything else. I found myself saying ‘just go to therapy already’ or ‘why did you marry him then?’The final short story was by another new to me author, Liz Ireland. “Mistletoe and Holly” was set up to be this story that I could get really excited about. A couple that had just started dating, Holly and Jason are about to spend their first holiday together at Holly’s parents house. Holly has talked it up as normally being over the top, yet when they arrive it all becomes a bit of a disaster. Normally, this would be something I could relate to and crack up over. Except when it’s the middle of the holidays and you, yourself are dealing with families and running from one thing to the next you want to escape reality (not that this was actually happening, I’m just saying) not be totally stressed out by a story in which everything that could possibly go wrong did. It was totally making me paranoid!So, here we have a collection of Christmas stories in which all three were a bit depressing and one was good. I think there are probably better collections out there. However, at the holidays we are all probably so highly strung we are all looking for something different in our reading!