What a cute book. I enjoyed it. The story is written well. The storytelling is made for children. Though they may need a little help. Children will enjoy this book. It genders natural and that good. The age group may be set for 4 years old and up.

The pictures are done well. Pictures are someone telling the story. As I was reading, I wonder if Matthew was dreaming or if it became real. The story set on Matthew mostly but his sister does come into play.

How the story goes makes you on a journey a bit. Will Matthew see a gingerbread train? What is so sweet and lovely about it? I enjoyed looking at this train. The train seems to come in the afternoon and only when I child is there. How this story ends is lovely and done well. Though I wonder what happens after the holiday.

If your children enjoy trains and love playing with them. This book is good for them. Parents can read the book to their young children. Children can read it if they choose to do so.

Seriously enjoyable.

If ever there was a story that could make a heart smile, Secret Santa was it. Jeremy and May are a sweet temptation. Adams keeps the plotline line simple and delivers magic. From life long friends to maybe something more, Secret Santa warms more than just the heart.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the others in the series. But it does keep the nice extras at the end.

I've just discovered the Cherringham cosy crime series which is made up of novellas released every couple of weeks.

It's set in a village in the English Cotswolds and features a pair of amateur sleuths: Sarah Edwards a web designer, who has moved back to Cherringham with her two children after her divorce and Jack Brennan, former NYPD detective who, together with his dog Riley, lives on a canal boat in Cherringham in honour of his dead wife's long-cherished plan to retire to the UK.

I dived in at #25 because I needed something short and Christmas themed that my wife and I could listen to in the car. Something 170 minutes long that deals with Santa going missing just before he's scheduled to turn on the Cherringham Christmas lights seemed a good fit. When I saw it was narrated by Neil Dudgeon who plays my favourite Inspector Barnaby in the most recent seasons of "Midsomer Murders". it became ideal.

It lived up to my expectations, providing a light but crunchy plot with a soft feel-good centre that wasn't too sweet. Neil Dudgeon gets all the accents right. The pace worked well and it didn't matter that I'd missed the first twenty-four episodes.

At first, I was surprised to find that no US/UK cultural clangers were dropped. Then I looked up the authors and learned that Neil Richards is a Brit scriptwriter and producer and Matt Costello is an American scriptwriter based in NYC and they've been writing TV scripts together since the late 1990s.

I'll be going back to Cherringham regularly for small slices of entertainment. I've bought the first two compilation books which cover the first six novellas.