As promised, here’s my review of Twelve Days of Christmas by Debbie Macomber. I thought that I should really pound out this review before the New Year because, as far as I’m concerned, Christmas doesn’t really end until January 1st.

The front of my book informs me that Debbie Macomber is a New York Times bestselling author. Now, I’m not saying she’s not a decent writer, but New York Times good? Eh. (Not that the whole New York Times thing means much anyway—too much politics there.) So I started this book expecting some exceptional writing. And it wasn’t. The plot was okay, but not exceptional. The books was—can you see where I’m going with this?—okay… Honestly, the whole plot felt like it was out of some Hallmark Christmas movie, or, more likely, it was written to become a Hallmark movie.

In a nutshell: Julia lives in an apartment building across from Cain. Cain isn’t outgoing or extroverted or a morning person like Julia; in fact, he’s something of a grouch. So she starts a campaign to kill him with kindness. As it happen to be 12 days until Christmas, it becomes a whole holiday thing. Add to this that fact that she’s blogging about the entire killing with kindness experiment and you can picture the story’s climax rather easily.

However, it’s a fun little romance and great for some holiday reading. However, if you’re hard up for some holiday cheer, here are 10 Christmas books that you should check out right away (or around next Christmas time).