Title: Twelve Days of Courting Miss Thomas
Author: Dani Renee
Quote: "[H]ad I been him, I would have won your favor...Give me twelve days of courting and you'll find out."
The "Twelve Days of" title is all this book has to do with Christmas. There are a few casual references to Christianity, beyond the story's taking place in the town of Saint Louis. The twelve days of courting, and the months after that during which Miss Thomas struggles to persuade her parents to let her marry a mere blacksmith when she's turned down a jeweler, take place in autumn.
This is a sweet historical romance set in the Victorian era. The expression of love that was supposed to take place before the wedding was the kiss, and Miss Thomas, a good Victorian girl although she's been allowed more freedom than many real ones had, worries whether Robert's kiss is going to be as unpleasant as a previous suitor's was. (Duh. This is a romance.)
If you like the steam trains and stagecoaches, floor-sweeping skirts and formal manners, Real Men's Work and real dangers, of "Western" stories but could do without the brawls and shoot-outs and saloons, this short book is for you.
I was somewhat surprised to find Miss Thomas serving stew in the poorhouse. Rich people did take food to the poorhouse, sometimes surplus garden produce, sometimes soups and stews prepared just for the purpose, sometimes day-old (or moldy) bread, sometimes leftovers from a dinner party scraped off main dish and salad and dessert plates all into one bucket...but most poorhouses were organized as "workhouses" where the residents cultivated their own garden and prepared and served their own meals. A professional editor would query and research this detail of the story. In a self-published book I'll accept it as a reminder that, although characters like these should have existed in the real world and probably did, the story is fiction.
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