by Alexandrea Weis
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The Christmas Spirit by Alexandrea Weis is a holiday romance with paranormal and suspense elements.
I liked this book but didn’t love it. It feels a bit like a Hallmark movie. There were some Austrian folklore elements that I really enjoyed.
I initially picked it up because some reviews compared it to A Christmas Carol. While there are some thematic similarities–most notably being set around Christmas and involving spirits–I think that comp is a little heavy-handed.
We have a bit of an unreliable narrator with Courtney, a writer whose publisher has given her a strict deadline to update her latest book with their notes, but her heart is not fully in it. To find enough quiet to do so, she books the last remote cabin that she can find in the Smoky Mountains. She makes some strange decisions from time to time which occasionally pulled me out of the story, like how many times she leaves the cabin on her own for various reasons.
The prose is well written throughout. I wish there was a bit more meat to the story. Added depth and development to the plot could have changed this from a like-it to a love-it for me.
If you’re looking for a romantic holiday novella that has some paranormal elements (with a bonus black Norwegian forest cat), this might be the book for you.
I received a copy of this book to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.
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