Lillian Warwick is a curmudgeonly old woman who suffers a bad fall and is forced into the care of her daughters and granddaughter. After the fall she finds herself reliving old memories of times gone by and remembers her own history and past mistakes. Will acknowledging the pain in her past allow her to acknowledge the reality of her future? Lucy Bates is a nurse in training at the hospital where Lillian was admitted. She too has some big decisions ahead of her as she struggles with thoughts of quitting nursing school and going back to being a waitress full time. She isn’t helped in this by her less than supportive husband, who undercuts her commitment and confidence at every turn. But, with the coming of the Christmas season and following New Year both of these women, and their families undergo a transformation worthy of the spirit of the holiday season.

This novel is apparently the seventh in a series of books about Cape Light. It is written in such a way, though, that I had no problem picking up the novel and enjoying it. This book was co-written by Thomas Kinkade, The Painter of Light, one of his works is featured on the cover, the painting Skater's Pond.

I enjoyed the positive messages and the well written storyline in this book. I enjoyed reading about all of the characters and had no problems getting involved in their lives and their problems, given time. I especially liked the historical back story given about Lillian Warwick with flashbacks to the 1950's, an era I enjoy learning about. Throughout the novel the frustrations and joys of the holidays were very well illustrated and a lot of the messages really struck home. Just a warning, this is a bit of a Christian novel in that there is prayer, sermons, biblical references and discussions of faith.

The book cuts back and forth between several key characters throughout, and for me this made it hard to get into. This book started out and ended with the groups being loosely interconnected but never really together. The story was a little short to be doing so much cutting back and forth and, aside from all of the characters being from Cape Light, their bonds were tenuous at best.

My only other complaint was really about the way the novel treated Lillian Warwick's story at the end. Without giving too much away, a major point is constantly hinted at and alluded to throughout the novel concerning her husband, the book ends leaving just what those allusions were to up to the reader. I hate books that do that.

In the end this was a wonderful way to finish my season of holiday reading. The story had lots of warm messages about faith, forgiveness, fidelity, love, hope and strength that I hope to carry on into the New Year. ( )

This book just between 3 separate events. Events that happens to the main character Lilian in 1955, Lillian at the current time, and a nursing student. For the life of me I do not know why we have the nursing student, she does not connect with the main character at all, but it is a nice story about the nursing student. The nice part of the story is that everyone has a change of heart around Christmas. This is a light read during the Christmas season ( )

This is, I think, the 7th story set in the small fictional town of Cape Light. Sadly, I've read a previous one, and familiarity didn't help.

The story goes between 3 different story threads: 1) elderly curmudgeon Lillian Warwick is injured in a fall (the flyleaf says she has pneumonia--she doesn't); 2) Lillian in her youth; and 3) nursing student Lucy Bates.

You'd think the three threads would intertwine--that Lucy would end up caring for Lillian at the hospital, and that things that happened in Lillian's youth would affect her present. They don't. At all. It's like three completely separate stories.

The only commonality between young Lillian and old Lillian is that I didn't like either one of them. Young Lillian was the type of young woman who's rude to men on principle. I despise that trait. And old Lillian was rude to everyone.

Lucy wasn't much better--she was a doormat. Her husband resents her spending time at her studies, especially when she has to work at the hospital, so he belittles her and does his best to undermine her confidence, refusing to help with the kids or the house. Lucy's reaction? To doubt herself and finally give up.

There were also a couple of annoying errors that stuck in my head. One was the nursing school. At one point, Lucy performs perfectly all day, but forgets to raise a bed rail. Her instructor tells her she gets an F for the day because of that. I don't buy that one mistake would merit a failing grade. I also don't buy that nursing students get letter grades for each day. Granted, my hospital experience is a couple of decades old, and it was a decade earlier than that that my mom went to nursing school, so it could very well be realistic--it just didn't feel like it.

The other one was really stupid. The hero of young Lillian's thread gets a Purple Heart. For valor. Um. No. Even non-military types know what Purple Hearts are, and they're not for valor. A quick click to Wikipedia would have fixed that.

Yeah, those were minor. The big problem is that the book was boring. Nothing really happened, there was no rhyme or reason to collecting those three threads in this book--it would have worked better if they'd been separated completely as 3 novellas instead of jumping between threads each chapter. The characters weren't likable, and none of them changed--except for an unbelievable change of heart of Lucy's husband at the very end.

And there were the usual sappy lite-religious platitudes from Reverend Ben. ( )