Jennifer Chiaverini

As Christmas approaches, Sarah wants to decorate Elm Creek Manor. When she and Sylvia retrieve the decorations from the attic, Sarah finds another box Sylvia did not expect. The box contains a quilt begun by Great Aunt Lucinda which had been worked on by generations of Bergstrom women but never completed. Sarah wants to finish it. Sylvia hopes Sarah can make amends with her mother this Christmas. The book is filled with lovely Christmas traditions and sadness as we read of the men lost in World War II. I'm not sure why I never read this installment, but I'm glad I did. It's a great way to start the holiday series--thinking of families and the traditions we share.… (mer)

I enjoyed this one enough that I finished it in a matter of hours.

In this installment, we get the back story of several potential new instructors for Elm Creek Quilt Camp - namely, how they got into quilting in the first place - and I really liked that.

There were a few annoyances: the author writes as if she truly believes everyone should be coupled and that "the one" exists for every individual; young children speak unrealistically; characters gripe about being twenty pounds overweight as if that's a huge amount; and there were several very obvious typos that changed the meaning of the text.

But I finished it in one day, so I still really liked it, obviously! I'll be curious to see where these new characters go in future books.… (mer)

Just what I needed: A cozy, clean read about a community of quilters!

Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective. Instead of each character picking up the story where the previous one left off, though, most of the chapters cover the same time period, so various plot points and dialogue exchanges are repeated, which I didn't love. A couple of minor characters also acted in ways that seemed unrealistic.

On the moral front, premarital sex is portrayed as being relatively acceptable (though there is no description of it).

All the same, it was a nice break from the nonfiction I tend to read. I'll definitely keep turning to this series in the future for all my fluffy-but-not-too-fluffy reading needs.… (mer)