Time To Sing Praises of Noelle

Summary from Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Dog Named Christmas comes this heartwarming Christmas story about the power of family and the strength and love that comes from our pets. In this installment of the poignant stories of the McCray family and their lovable canines in rural Kansas, matriarch Mary Ann McCray is determined to shake up Christmas by accepting the role as Crossing Trail's first woman Santa Claus. Mary Ann, always a bit of a rebel, is looking to offer a more progressive voice in the staunchly conservative town at Christmastime and has a few ideas up her red velvet sleeves. 

My Review:

This was the first book I've read about the McCray family, but hearing about A Dog Named Christmas and seeing that this book was about another dog, I had to read it.  As a dog parent myself, any book that involves dogs.  Most of the time I'm not disappointed in the story and this is one of those times, except for a few things I would've liked to have seen in this book.

Mary Ann was my favorite character in this book.  She gave so much to her community, especially around Christmas time becoming the town's first woman Santa Clause, Anna Claus.  The book centers around her new fame as she becomes popular with all the children.  Unfortunately, her husband George didn't like this at first.  That bothered me while reading the book.  I don't know what Kincaid was trying to get at during this part of the book, but George came off as sexist.  I get that he was supposed to be old-fashioned, but in this day and age, it's not something many of us women wanted to read.  It was even noted how he thought Mary Ann's place was in the home doing the woman's job.  Kincaid redeemed himself however when George had a change of heart and saw that his wife was worth more than just being a housewife that he wanted her to be.

I was disappointed to see that there wasn't enough written about Elle, Tom's dog.  The name of the book was the name of the dog, but Kincaid made her off to be a secondary character, rather than the main as I thought she would be from the beginning of the book.  I think I would've enjoyed the book more had there been more about her and her adventures.

At times Kincaid through in too many stories at once and the sequence got confusing as I was reading.  Link and Abbey's story came in out of nowhere and at first, I didn't see why it was important.  Granted as I continued to read I understood why they were a part of this book, but before then I didn't get the reason why.

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars, because I wish there was more about Elle in the book.  As I stated, I love anything with dogs and was hoping for a book with a dog as the main character, especially Elle being as mischievous as she was.  If you're an animal lover, especially of dogs, and want to escape the troubles of today's world, then this book is for you.

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.



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