Title:
The Noel Stranger
Author:
Richard Paul Evans
Read
by: Erin Mallon
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Length:
Approximately 6 hours and 7 minutes
Source:
Review Copy from Simon & Schuster.
Thank-you!
It’s
not Christmas without Richard Paul Evans’s latest Christmas tale. The Noel Stranger is excerpts from Maggie
Walther’s Diary that tell a story of a woman who has her life shattered and her
attempt to pick up the pieces. Maggie
owns a successful catering company and helps her politician husband entertain
with style. Her world is devastated when
it is discovered that her husband Clive is a bigamist and he has another wife
in Colorado.
Maggie
doesn’t know how to get out of her slump, but her best friend helps her to get
out of the house and moving again. She
goes to get a Christmas tree and is immediately smitten by the owner of the
Christmas tree lot, Andrew. Maggie and
Andrew go on a date and he asks her to accompany him for Thanksgiving to Mexico
for vacation at a friend’s Condo. Maggie
says yes, and they are off on the adventure of a lifetime. When Maggie discovers that Andrew has secrets
from his past, will their relationship survive?
My stranger
danger senses went off for this book. I
found it unbelievable that Maggie would leave the country with a virtual
stranger. It also seemed unbelievable
that the stranger would be okay with separate bedrooms but would spend a great
deal of money on you. It read like the fantasy someone would have where a rich
stranger would show up and pay for the adventure of a lifetime, but it wasn’t
very realistic.
That
being said, I did enjoy listening to the book until the end. Maggie became clingy and needy, and I didn’t
understand her motivations. She deserved
better. I didn’t feel the love between Maggie and Andrew, and it seemed to me
like Maggie was getting herself into another bad situation. The ending of the
book really ruined this story for me. I
can’t say more without ruining the book!
Erin
Mallon is a fine narrator, but she does have a strange inflection at the end of
sentences that bothers me. I feel rather
petty saying that, but I do want to be honest about how I felt while listening
to the audiobook.
Overall,
I’ve enjoyed Richard Paul Evans other books in the Noel series, but I would
skip The Noel Stranger and read his previous works if I had to do it over
again.
