The Christmas Wish

I fell in love with the Blessings, Georgia years ago when one of the books ended up on the Brenda Novak Book Club’s reading list. I hate picking up a series in the middle, even when each book is billed as both a part of the series and a stand-alone. I binge-read this entire series and fell in love with the town and the people in it. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had an opportunity to revisit the series in quite some time, but August of 2022 found me without any of my TBR list available, so I decided to check and see if Sharon Sala had added new books to this series. To my utter delight, there were two! Woohoo! I grew up in a city, then I moved to an even bigger city, so I have little to zero knowledge of small towns. I have certainly been to small towns, and I know people from small towns, but that’s the extent of my experience. I know even less about small towns in the South. Based on the cheesy romance novels I read, small towns are all very tight-knit, everybody-loves-everybody, everybody is family types of places. The previous books in Sala’s Blessings, Georgia series have included tales of heroism, community, kindness, and giving. While this book includes similar themes, the similarities genuinely end there. The word that I kept thinking of while reading this book was “saccharine.” Annoying saccharine. The beginning of Wade and Birdie’s relationship was so unrealistic, I wondered if I was even reading something by Sharon Sala. It didn’t have the same overall feeling that the previous books had. It was so insincere it became cringey. Every time Wade called Birdie “Darling,” my eyes rolled so hard I briefly lost vision and threw up in my mouth a little. There was a scene with Birdie in the hardware store where she works where she was faced with disgusting misogyny. Instead of putting the perpetrator in his place because she is a strong capable woman, she issued a threat on behalf of her fiancé. I was hugely disappointed. Women should be able to stand on their own merits, not because their big strong boyfriends are going to beat up the bad guy. Just ugh. I’m going to keep reading this series, and I still love Sharon Sala’s books, but seriously, skip this one.

3/5 Stars I have some mixed feelings about this book. I will admit it was cute and very hallmark-like, which I absolutely enjoyed. However, I also felt like nothing really happened. Everything felt very okay. I would say there is a lot of plot or that this is really character-driven. It felt just a little boring for me because I felt like there wasn't a whole lot keeping my attention. This all being said this is very much a cozy read. It's easy to read and perfect for an inbetween book.