Comfort & Joy by Kristin Hannah

#2
COMFORT & JOY by Kristin Hannah
Rating – A
Began/Finished – Wee hours of January 2, 2006
Genre/Date Published/# Pages – Fiction – 2005 – 235 pages
Characters: Joy Candellaro, recently divorced high school librarian
Time/Place: Present Day – Southern California/Olympic Peninsula of Washington State
Where Did Book Come From: Personal TBR pile
Reason for Reading: 1) Author is automatic read for me 2) The Holiday season is coming to a close 3) Wanted to see if it was as “bad” as others have said.

Joy Candellaro is a high school librarian in Bakersfield, California. As the story opens it’s the last day before school break for the holidays and her heart isn’t into celebrating. Yes, she has gone through the motions but her heart isn’t in it. She has just gone through a nasty divorce after catching her husband in bed with her sister. On a whim after receiving yet some more devastating news, she boards a plane bound for the Canadian town of Hope – feeling that Hope is what she needs. Things don’t go as she would have wanted when what she thinks at first is turbulence is the plane crashing into the woods.

I thought this was some of Kristin Hannah’s best writing EVER. I was immediately drawn into the story with her easy-going style of writing and even flow. The story of a woman celebrating Christmas alone after going through a heartbreaking divorce yet really just wanting to get away from it all was something I had thought of more than once in my life. I bought into the entire scenario of the book hook, line, and sinker. I know there are readers who thought the story was well, far-fetched. But I figured if I could buy time-travel or read about faeries and leprechauns I could certainly suspend disbelief long enough to buy into this scenario. I thought it was a beautiful story and reading it at the end of the Holiday season made it perfect timing.