My True Love Gave to Me ... YA Short Stories with holiday theme

This collection of holiday-themed short stories is an essential selection which will give students an opportunity to sample writing from Young Adult authors such as Rainbow Rowell, David Levithan, Holly Black, and Gayle Forman. I especially enjoyed the story “It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown” by editor Stephanie Perkins: in a Christmas tree lot, a girl finds the perfect video voice for her project, the perfect tree, and an understanding, supportive boyfriend. The romance was light and fun as it was in “Angels in the Snow” by Matt De La Peña featuring a Latino NYU student and also in “Star of Bethlehem” by Ally Carter which uses exchanged identities to start new traditions.  A few stories involve fantasy elements, including “The Girl who Woke the Dreamer” by Laini Taylor. Several of the others felt a bit long for “short” stories, but maybe I am just not quite in the holiday mood as of yet. 

Overall, My True Love Gave to Me will have appeal to fans of both holiday romance and YA writers. And this collection just may encourage readers to give themselves the "present" of a longer title by any of these talented authors.

Relationships ... lost and found

In Landline by Rainbow Rowell Georgie McCool is out to save her 15 years of marriage.  Her husband Neal travels to Omaha with their 2 daughters to celebrate 2013’s Christmas while Georgie stays behind for work in Los Angeles….. magically (and due to some clever writing!) she makes the connection via a landline from 2013 to 1998 when she and Neal were dating and struggling to come to terms with what they each wanted from the relationship.  Remember those emotions? How everything seemed more vivid? And had more drama?  It’s easy to see (from the outside) that Georgie needs to take some deep breaths and think about what is really important to her – watching her go through that process can be painful at times.  Readers who have been in longer-term relationships will definitely appreciate this novel, but to me that means 20-somethings or older – NOT the high school students who loved Rowell’s Eleanor and Park and Fangirl.

Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy is a collection of short stories centered in a street in Dublin and many of them focus on marriages, too. Binchy explores the life choices we make – the advice that we often choose not to follow and the consequences of those decisions. This is a book about love and loss which I would ration – picking it up for a story now and again – in part to avoid the feeling of similar plots (although there are plenty of unexpected twists) and in part to savor the last published writing of a favorite author for 30 years beginning with reading Light a Penny Candle, and continuing through Circle of Friends, Scarlet Feather and many more.

Possible read-alikes for Binchy: Jeffrey Archer, Rosamunde Pilcher, Kate Morton, Lucinda Riley, Adriana Trigiani.  Check Novelist for others.