The Christmas Table is book 10 of Donna VanLiere’s Christmas Hope series and I am proud to admit I have read them all!! Loved them all!! Cried through every single one. Imagine everything that makes a Hallmark type movie in a delightful book with beautiful writing and characters you want more of. Each book builds on the one before but can also stand alone as VanLiere reintroduces them in a subtle way that feels natural and doesn’t distract from the story line.
VanLiere takes us back to 1972 to start the story of a set of recipes stashed in a homemade kitchen table. The table was built by a hard working husband that desired to give his wife a place to serve her family and friends but would also serve as piece of family history. What the husband didn’t see coming was tragedy and illness that could threaten to destroy the future he imagined for the table and his family. Shift to modern day and the table resurfaces when a newly wed couple needs a place eat as a growing family. The new wife finds the recipes in a hidden drawer. For both families the recipes provided a way to connect with the past and provide the wives of ’72 and present with the instructions on providing for their family through delicious meals but also life lessons and stories of family. In perfect Christmas Hope fashion the recipes will find a way to reunite the past and present and give the reader the perfect Christmas miracle and story of hope.
This year more than ever I needed a story like this. I needed to cry because things do work out sometimes and there is a happy ending.
I gave The Christmas Table five stars because a book that brings ever emotion gets every star.
Thank you Netgalley, Donna VanLiere and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
Army of Readers 