First, a comment and then, I promise, I'll get on with the review. :) As with many of the other books I've read this year, The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck came to me through an online book club that I joined. Almost without exception, those books have not been something I'd choose for myself, but the vast majority of them have been exceptionally good reading and I'm most certainly glad I joined the group. If you're looking to broaden your own reading horizons, join a local book club or an online book club. And now, I've yakked enough... so on with the review!
The Christmas Sweater
By Glenn Beck
Publisher: Threshold Editions (2008)
Format: Hardcover, 284 pages
Rated: 5 stars of 5 possible
Young Eddie was having a hard time adjusting to the fact that life without his father was different. His mother worked four jobs to pay for the necessary things in life, and traded hours with her co-workers so that she could spend more time with him. Eddie really only wanted one thing for Christmas, a shiny new bicycle, but he knew that his mom would have a hard time coming up with the money for that bicycle... so he prayed to God that she would find a way, and promised that he would earn it. Like the main character in Mitch Albom's For One More Day, and like Ebenezer Scrooge in the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, after a long period of deep soul-searching, young Eddie wants his chance for atonement.
The Christmas Sweater has another thing in common with the Mitch Albom book mentioned earlier. This is a genre I mostly don't find myself attracted to reading, and would never have chosen for myself. This novel is a tear jerker, which almost caused me not to open it. I don't normally seek those out on purpose. Still, because of my tendency to read almost anything, I decided to give The Christmas Sweater a chance. I'm glad I did. Its smaller than usual size (pages are seven inches high by 5 inches wide) makes this book easy to handle and to carry around, which you may want to do simply because it's so hard to put aside. The novel is well written, easy to read, and is one of those heart-warming stories which stay with you long after you finish. Unlike many other novels, this one ends on a positive note, so I can recommend it to all.
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