Review

Noelle Perkins is a woman who knows wants she wants in life. After a tumultuous last couple of years, she uproots her life and in a split second decision, leaves Los Angeles and her law career, and opens the Christmas Attic in Fools Gold, California. This idyllic quaint town is welcoming and embraces her as she finds her place in their town through her Christmas store.

After almost a year of being settled, she has made friends and formed bonds, and knows this is a place where she can truly call home. By contrast, Gabriel Boylan is a man that doesn’t know what he wants in life. Through a stupid mistake on his part, he sustains a serious injury on his hand. A trauma doctor in the Army, he finds himself forced to take a leave of absence. Usually during the holiday season he avoids family like the plague, but almost through necessity he finds himself seeking out his fraternal twin brother Gideon, whom he hasn’t seen in at least ten years, to cool his heels until he’s fully healed and able to get back to work.

Fool’s Gold is where people come and usually unexpectedly (because they meet and fall in love) stay. Christmas on the 4th is the 12.5th book in the ongoing series by Susan Mallery. The Fools Gold series is quite an elaborate series and I must confess this is the first one that I’ve read. You are introduced to characters from previous books in small doses, just so you know they are all happily married with baby on the way or on their way to marriages and babies. Now, because the hero in Christmas on the 4th is a brother to the hero in book 11, Two of a Kind, we spend a little more time with Felicia and Gideon.

Felicia, the heroine from Two of a Kind, is Noelle’s friend and features, at least in the beginning, quite prominently in the book. Maybe a little bit too much for my liking. Especially as I didn’t find her character believable. She’s supposed to be this brainiac who is drop-dead gorgeous and takes everything you say literally, but has this big heart. Picture the characterization of Dr. Temperance Brennan from the TV show Bones.

I love Christmas and I love Christmas romance books so I was looking forward to reading one by Susan Mallery. Although the hero and the heroine meet, quite literally, on the first page of the book, the pace was a little slow for my liking and I found myself bored. Their meeting felt disjointed and the relationship rushed. But a quarter way through the book, it picked up and I began to care for the many characters in the quaint town of Fool’s Gold.

This story is a tried and true tale. Girl meets boy and the girl is ready to love again but the boy is not. Battle ensues. Guy freaks out and runs, and girl is left brokenhearted. But despite the formulaic plot, I still found myself being drawn in. Susan Mallery creates characters who you cherish and want to cheer for, slightly flawed and all. This book tends to feel a little womeny fiction, as there are so many secondary and tertiary characters that you can barely keep up with them all. But they do tend to weave their way into your heart once you figured out who’s who. I almost feel at a disadvantage as I’ve not read the previous books in the series.

All and all, I would say this is a solid read if you’re a Susan Mallery fan and you like tried-and-true stories. I would compare this to my love of corny romantic movies, even though I know they are flawed. When they come on, I watch them every time, even though they are predictable. But if you’re looking for different and groundbreaking, Christmas on 4th Street may not be the one for you.