A Lot Like Christmas by Connie Willis: This was an unusual but fun collection of Christmas stories, involving spirits, aliens, futuristic technology, magic, global blizzards, and androids. There was a certain narrative sameness to many of the stories, specifically a Grinchy attitude towards the unwashed masses who celebrate Christmas the wrong way, but there were some standout stories, too. "In Coppelius's Toyshop" was creepy, "Adaptation" was lovely and touching, "Cat's Paw" was a nice little subversion of the brilliant detective trope, and "Epiphany" was a wonderful meditation on belief and the Second Coming.
Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe by Melissa de la Cruz: I was hoping this would be a fun, frothy read, but it was disappointing. The book had barely any connection to Pride and Prejudice other than the names (of course there was none of the satire and social commentary of the original), plot points were so crammed into the narrative that the timeline made no sense, and the adult characters behaved like teenagers. The overall impression was that of a story too hastily written. (For those of you curious about the movie version: Hallmark sanitized the heck out of it, getting rid of the gay couple, the drinking, the kissing, and the character conflicts.)
The Mistletoe Murder and other Stories by P.D. James: James's first four Christmas-themed mysteries, written annually for a newspaper I think, were exactly the kind of cozy, wintry stories I was in the mood for. My only complaint was that they were too short.
Hiddensee by Gregory Maguire: Maguire's latest novel purports to be an origin story for Herr Drosselmeier and the Nutcracker, but it was so much more than that. Maguire weaved together 18th century German life, fairy tales and folklore, and even a little Greek mythology into the story of Dirk, a foundling who has a fatal yet magical encounter in a sacred forest. Because of that, or perhaps his childhood or his nature, Dirk grows up caught between two worlds, not quite able to fit in to Bavarian society yet also not quite able to acknowledge the magic that clings to him. Maguire's voice is timeless yet wry, and the result is thoroughly lovely and sad.
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