My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories
By: Stephanie Perkins, editor / Narrated By: Various
Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
Expect complete and utter diversity and a LOT of sweet endings!
I’ll admit it: at first I rushed through the starts of stories in order to figure out if any were of Hanukkah or of Kwanzaa. THEN I came back and listened to the whole thing, and I was delighted. Sure My True Love Gave To Me goes out of its way to represent every type of person, every race, gender, sexual preference, but it all works really well. Or maybe I liked it because it came on the heels of listening to A Merry Little Christmas and I was SORELY in need of some sweetness and light. (By the way: NO Kwanzaa! I know, right? Boooooo!).
There are stories for New Year’s Eve (“Midnights”), there’s one of a Jewish young man playing Santa, much to his dismay (“Your Temporary Santa”). There’s a story of the blending of a Civil War re-enactment with a live Nativity, an unholy blending that just might be saved by the town’s prankster (“Beer Buckets and Baby Jesus”). I was floored when I discovered that there was even one celebrating the Krampus (“Krampuslauf” which was very entertaining).
My two favorites were “Welcome to Christmas, CA” and “It’s a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown” (See? Even the Winter Solstice gets a nod…. but NO Kwanzaa? Let me booooo again! But I digress…). I liked the former because it reminded me of Christmas Eves past with family and tamales. At first I thought I wasn’t going to because the girl snarls and snaps a lot, but then it comes to be about family and everyone who loves her. The Winter Solstice one is just plain sweet, with trying to do something happy, a tradition you once celebrated, even in the midst of sadness, loss, and a sense of being in limbo.
Add to it all, the narrators are all topnotch. Most of them I was already familiar with, and they did not disappoint here. Seriously, when you find yourself with a lump in your throat, a tear in your eye, you know the narrator managed to wring the text out for all it’s worth.
This is an audiobook geared toward teens and young adults. It has them drinking in a few stories, smoking a joint in another, and each and every one of them has sometimes chaste, sometimes passionate hugs and kisses. But that’s all: It goes no further than that… phew! ‘Cause I hate when it goes further! It’s a really sweet audiobook with so many happy endings, and I was very much in the mood for each of them. Also, they’re so different, it was like stepping into a brand new theater with each story.
By the way? The oooooone Hanukkah story is “What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth?”. It’s about a Jewish girl going to college in Bum Futz USA, trying to fit in here on the last night of Hanukkah. It’s a very nice story of misunderstandings at first, greater recognition of spirits later.
But NO Kwanzaa! Y’all may join me in a resounding: BOOOOOOO!!!
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