Review: The Christmas Clock

Title: The Christmas Clock
Author: Kat Martin
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Pages: 185

Plot: (Because of bad time management I used this one. Sorry.) Teddy Winters was eight years old that Christmas, too young to understand all the undercurrents swirling around him in the tiny Michigan town of Dreyerville. He wasn't able to value that Christmas for the miracle it truly was. Teddy only knew he wanted to buy the beautiful Victorian clock in the window of Tremont Antiques as a gift for his grandmother, Lottie Sparks, a woman desperate to find him a home before her rapidly progressing Alzheimers left him an orphan. Teddy didn't know that in trying to buy the clock he would meet Sylvia Winters and Joe Dixon, a couple, once in love, desperate to overcome the past. He didnt know he would form a friendship with his neighbors, Floyd and Doris Culver, two people struggling to revive their long-dead marriage. He didnt know that these people would fill his Christmas with magic and hope; that the love of his friends would change his world, and that he would forever change theirs.

I think... This is a keeper.  Really. A book to rest in your shelf all year and to be picked up again and again at Christmas time. I loved it. It has the child-needs-parents theme, but is so different from all the others, that I totally believed in the story. The characters are well-built and loveable, especially Teddy and his granny. I had no problems to buy the love story and understand how it developed or what went wrong back then. Only once, I had the feeling it was a bit rushed, but it was no problem at all as the book as a whole is a lovely Christmas story with depth and it will definitely warm your heart.

And - oh! - check out the cover! This wonderful, wonderful Christmassy cover in bright red. It has to make you feel the spirit of Christmas. Please say it does!

Run and grab yourself a copy and then buy some more and stuff them into the stockings of beloved ones.

Happy Reading!