My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories edited by Stephanie Perkins
Review by Lauren
Source: personal copy; all opinions are my own
Official Summary: If you love holiday stories, holiday movies, made-for-TV-holiday
specials, holiday episodes of your favorite sitcoms and, especially, if
you love holiday anthologies, you’re going to fall in love with My True Love Gave to Me:
Twelve Holiday Stories by twelve bestselling young adult writers (Holly
Black, Ally Carter, Matt de La Peña, Gayle Forman, Jenny Han, David
Levithan, Kelly Link, Myra McEntire, Rainbow Rowell, Stephanie Perkins,
Laini Tayler and Kiersten White), edited by the international
bestselling Stephanie Perkins. Whether you celebrate Christmas or
Hanukkah, Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa, there’s something here for
everyone. So curl up by the fireplace and get cozy. You have twelve
reasons this season to stay indoors and fall in love.
Review: I really do enjoy an anthology of short stories here and there. I think it’s the rare person that will love every single story, but that’s okay. It’s still fun to see what authors you love included, as well as perhaps discover a new author or two!
Editor Stephanie Perkins had one of my favorite stories, titled “It’s a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown.” I loved the characters and the overall story. It was just really well done and a lot of fun! I also liked that the MC celebrated Yule and not quite Christmas. It was a bit different in that regard, and I appreciate that! Not everyone celebrates Christmas this time of year but there are plenty of other holidays they might participate in!
I also really liked “What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth?” by Gayle Forman. Another author, like Perkins, that I had previously read. Sophie is pretty easy to relate to and she feels like she’s always making the wrong decisions or saying the wrong thing. As for the holiday celebrated, Sophie is Jewish and takes part in Hanukkah.
As it’s the holiday season, I won’t go into any of the stories I wasn’t so sure about. I didn’t find any of them bad per se, so I do think this is a well done collection overall!
This does sound like a great collection of seasonal stories – thanks for sharing.
Ha. I only read Rainbow Rowell's story from this anthology. Bah. I should really read the rest.
This is one that I need to read one of these days. I keep hearing so much about it! Great review!
This sounds like the perfect Christmas book Lauren! 🙂 Definitely going to have to give it a try. Thanks for sharing and, as always, fabulous post! <3
Sounds like a fun holiday book!
I have not read My True Love Gave to Me namely because of the mixed reviews, but I do love that there's diversity in the anthologies; particularly Sophie's take on Hanukkah 🙂
Yay! I'm glad you enjoyed this one overall. As you know, I had a problem with a few of them… but overall I was so pleased with this group of short stories! I'm sure I'll be rereading it next year too. 🙂
I want to read this anthology, maybe next year. I usually enjoy these kind of short stories int his season 😉
I LOVE Stephanie Perkins, constantly hear about thia one around Christmas, still haven't read it though, I'm not exactly into holiday reads, haha, but maybe next year? Glad you enjoyed it though!