Noel Street by Richard Paul Evans

Title:  Noel Street

Author: Richard Paul Evans

Read by:  Helene Maksoud

Publisher: Simon & Shuster Audio

Length: Approximately 5 hours and 55 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Shuster Audio.  Thank-you!

I have found that Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a new Richard Paul Evans novel.  They are my Christmas comfort audiobooks.  This year, Noel Street was both a comfort and an intriguing Christmas Audiobook.

Elle is a single mother with a mixed-race child living in the small town of Mistletoe Idaho in the 1970s.  Her husband died in the Vietnam war and she is barely able to make ends meet.  When a handsome stranger comes to town with baggage of his own, will Elle be able to make her Christmas dreams come true? 

With the top two historical fiction books these past two years (according to Goodreads) being set in the 1970s, I’m starting to feel old.  The 1970s is the decade of my birth.  It is an intriguing time period with interesting social issues.  The issues of a mixed-race marriage and the Vietnam War brought an interesting depth to this story.

Narrator Helene Maksoud was fantastic. I loved the characters and the story. Elle tries her hardest to make her life with her new found “family” of friends raising her young son after her family threw her out due to her mixed-race marriage.   There were light hearted moments in this novel as well that I enjoyed, especially the “ketchup lady” that Elle has to serve at work. I also enjoyed that the book took the story to contemporary times at the end so you can see what happens to all of the characters. I couldn’t get enough of this novel and was really sad when it ended.

Overall, Noel Street is a great Christmas novel that brings together the spirit of the season with an intriguing look into social issues of the 1970s.  I love Richard Paul Evans Christmas novels and this is my new favorite of his novels.