Hope at Christmas: A Novel
By: Nancy Naigle
Rating: 5 of 5
This is a lovely story about Sydney Ragsdale and her young ten-year old daughter starting over again in a small town. Sydney is running away to lick her wounds after finding out that her husband has been cheating on her for years. She and her daughter RayAnne head to Hopewell, North Carolina to live in the house that her grandparents left her.
She has a few marketable skills but, like many women, was out of the workplace for years raising her daughter. She has the promise of a job and a roof over her head but has to deal with attitude from RayAnne who didn’t want to leave Atlanta or her dad. RayAnne doesn’t quite get that it was her father who walked out on the family.
Sydney looks for and finds a new foothold in the town by way of a temporary job at the local bookstore. She also finds many friends, including the town’s most eligible bachelor, Mac, who has a young son of his own. While the book has the beginning of a romance, it does not include any sexual references at all. I found that very appealing in a Christmas story. While the book is not Christian per se, there is a focus on both faith and Christmas, with prayers and references.
The plot of the story flowed well and the characters were believable. There were parts of the story that made me laugh and there were parts where I was wiping tears from my eyes.
I was provided a digital advance reader copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley.
This is a lovely story about Sydney Ragsdale and her young ten-year old daughter starting over again in a small town. Sydney is running away to lick her wounds after finding out that her husband has been cheating on her for years. She and her daughter RayAnne head to Hopewell, North Carolina to live in the house that her grandparents left her.