The Christmas Shoes - Donna VanLiere

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AUTHOR: Donna VanLiere

SERIES: Christmas Hope #1
GENRE: Christian Fiction
RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: #GrinchAlert! A typical Christmassy tearjerker with moral life lessons and sappy events. Will work for those who love emotional Christmassy stories. Not really my cup of tea.

Story Synopsis:
Christmas, 1985.
Robert Layton is a workaholic who believes that he is satisfying his obligation to his family – wife Kate and their two little daughters – by fulfilling their material needs.
Nathan is an eight-year-old boy whose mom has a terminal illness and moight not have long to live.
A chance encounter between the two creates a longlasting impact. This involves the titular ‘Christmas Shoes’.
The story comes to us in the first person perspective of Robert and third person limited perspectives of various characters.

This book is based on the song of the same name recorded by the group NewSong. The author’s friend, American Christian singer-songwriter Eddie Carswell, told her the premise of a Christmas song he was writing. He asked if it would make a good Christmas song and she replied that it would make a great book. Thus, NewSong released ‘The Christmas Shoes’ single to radio in the winter of 2000. And this book was published in 2001. There is also a made-for-TV movie that came later.

If you keep in mind that the idea for this book came from a song, you will realise why it seems so stretched out. There is essentially only one crucial scene in the book – the one connected to the shoes where Robert and Nathan interact. The rest is mostly emotional fillers.

(I should add that I hadn't heard of this Christmas song ever before. After completing the book, I gave it a try through the Amazon Music app. It was okay, with the emotional lyrics being its biggest plus point.)

Some of the characters were really wonderful. (Not surprising for a Christmas story.) Nathan the little boy, Maggie his dying momma, and Doris the teacher were my special favourites. The scenes that had any of these three characters were the best. Most of the other characters were also good, or maybe I should say, too good to be true. Robert is the only grey character, the Scrooge of this Christmas story who has a turnaround after an epiphany. I wish I could say any of the characters surprised me, but every single one of them was as stereotypical as possible. Then again, I shouldn’t expect surprises from this genre, I guess.

What might have elevated this straightforward predictable story for me could have been the writing. However, this is where I was most disappointed. The first person narration is used for Robert while the third person is put into work for a whole load of other characters. However, the switches happen randomly, within the same chapter too. A few paragraphs could have the first person of Robert, then the narrative might move to a third person of Nathan, jumping to third person of Maggie, possibly putting in third person pov of Kate and so on. It was like a figurative narratory ball was being thrown around and whichever character caught it got to recount the next few paragraphs. There are also plenty of time jumps. Though the first chapter mentions the timeline as 1985, the scenes start much before that. But we don’t know the right year as it simply isn’t specified.

Each chapter begins with a quote. Most of the quotes are truly beautiful. However, the final chapter begins with a quote from Donna VanLiere herself, which seemed quite weird tbh. Isn’t she writing the whole book? Why plug another one of her works through a quote?

The book comes under the Christian fiction category, and as such, there are an ample number of biblical values and verses. As I always say, I prefer Christian fiction that focusses more on deeds than words. The characters in this book do both – spout quotes from the Bible as well as act the “Christian” way in terms of love, acceptance and forgiveness. However, one part that really confused me was – how come all these practising Christians aren’t going to church any time, not even on Christmas Eve? Other than the Bible quotes and some paragraphs on what Jesus’ birth meant to humanity, the only thing the characters seem to be doing around Christmas is decorating the house, meeting up for family lunch/dinner, and exchanging gifts. Hello?!?! Remember, HE’s the reason for the season!

Today is Christmas Day, so I guess I have been the biggest Grinch here by reviewing a beloved Christmas story this poorly. However, it just didn’t work for me. I am not a great fan of Christmassy tearjerkers as they all focus on sermonising about moral values and have become highly predictable. I am truly glad if if these Hallmark-movie-style stories for you, but they just don’t click to my reading tastes any more.  So do take this review with a pinch of salt.

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