Litfuse Tour + Reading Challenge - An Endless Christmas by Cynthia Ruchti

There's no getting out of Christmas now, despite Katie rejecting Micah's marriage proposal. Cozy up this holiday season with Cynthia Ruchti's new novella, An Endless Christmas. The Binder family celebrates every Christmas as if it were their last. Too many people, too much snow, and too little room should be a recipe for disaster. But sometimes too much is just enough. Especially when it’s Christmas.

Celebrate the holidays with Cynthia and An Endless Christmas by entering her $100 Target gift card giveaway!

 

One grand prize winner will receive:

• A copy of An Endless Christmas
• A $100 gift card to Target

Enter today by clicking the icon below. But hurry, the giveaway ends on November 30th. The winner will be announced December 1st on Cynthia's blog.

My Review

I enjoy reading Cynthia Ruchti’s online devotions, so was looking forward to reading this novel. While it had the same excellent writing and spiritual insight her devotions had, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped. To start with, I felt like I’d been dumped in the middle of something as Katie Vale doesn’t accept her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, made in front of his entire extended family on the first day of their week-long Christmas celebration (we then backtracked, which made me wonder why we didn’t start with the backtrack and move forward).

There was also Katie’s personal insecurities which led her to turn down Micah’s proposal, and her unwillingness to talk about them:

“It frustrates me when I read a novel about a conflict between people that goes on and on when all they need to do is sit down and talk to each other for a few minutes. And listen to each other.”

I agree. This bugs me as well. So why did it take until the halfway point in An Endless Christmas for Katie and Micah to have this conversation? The other thing that bugged me was the Binder family: there were so many of them it became difficult to keep them straight, and they were too perfect. Yes, I know they weren’t actually perfect, but even their imperfections seemed perfect, which meant it didn’t ring true for me.

However, there were things we can all learn from the Binders, even if they are a little too perfect. The importance of family. The importance of God in our lives. The importance of finding joy where we are, of finding delight, of being satisfied with what we have.

Thanks to Worthy Books, Litfuse Publicity and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

This book counts towards my 2015 Reading Challenge as a book set during Christmas.