A well-written story about old friends helping one of their own make her last days joyous around the Christmas season.

The books has a lot of fun recipes for various cakes and each recipe has a part in the story. I copied a few to try someday. ( )

A great, entertaining and enjoyable read. Always enjoy the ladies of Hope Springs and glad to see their friendships endure. The recipes are good to have too!! ( )

A caveat before I begin: I started this book not knowing it was a sequel. In fact there are three books preceding it. This didn't seem to present much of an obstacle as all the relevant parts of the previous books are explained in great detail, ala the first chapter of any Babysitter's Club book.

This book offers a fairly interesting plot line about a often-overlooked demographic (older women). The dialogue is lively and illustrates the characters well. However, the narration is written in an awkward young-adult style. There are overly-explicit descriptions of completely unnecessary actions, the complete omission of important scenes in favor of describing them in the past tense, simple statements of what the characters are feeling rather than illustrating the feelings through actions or words and the frequent assumption that we have forgotten what we were told in previous chapters. It all adds up to awkward stilted prose that occasionally elicits groans.

However, the book does include a cake recipe at the beginning of every chapter, and as an avid baker, over half of them made me want to jump in the kitchen immediately.

I received this book with not quite enough time to read it for the 2009 Christmas season but I am eager to enjoy it this year. I read the first chapter in order to do a quick review now with a full review to be posted later. The first chapter sucked me right in; the writing was friendly and cozy. I was a little bit reminded of one of my other favorite series, The Mitford books. The chharacters spoke to each other with the confortable banter of old friends and made me feel immediately included. There is a cake recipe at the start of each chapter. I am not much of an actual cook but I am a dedicated imaginary cook. I had to flip ahead and check them all out. I loved reading the recipes and thinking about how wonderful that cake woud be IF I ever actually made it!

This book looks good and my first impression is completely favorable. I'll participate in a "Holiday Reading Challenge" this season and this will definitely be on my list.

Update 12/2010...I just finished this book and it lived up to my expectations. It was a light Christmas read in that the story was not hard to follow and the vocabulary wasn't overly challenging. But it had the heavy topic of cancer as a prominent feature so it wasn't just a fluffy, fun book, the author had to take us to some hard, sad places. The message throughout was that those hard, sad places are easier to face with friends in your corner. The friends in this book were a great bunch of women that I was happy to hang out with for awhile. I am ready to visit again and have another book in the series "Friendship Cake" already waiting in my TBR pile . ( )

In Christmas Cake, Lynne Hinton continues to explore the antics and relationships of the ladies of Hope Springs, North Carolina. Their current adventure centers around the creation of a holiday cake cookbook, but, as always, involves much more! This book is a pleasant, light read with the highlight of a new holiday cake recipe at the beginning of each chapter. The ladies of Hope Springs give the reader comfort as they feel like real people with real problems. ( )