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Friday, December 14, 2012

Book Review - The Taste of Snow by Stephen V Masse

I LOVED THIS BOOK SO MUCH, AS ITS THE HOLIDAY SEASON I REALLY WANTED TO SHARE AGAIN ;-)

Book Review
The Taste of Snow
The Taste of Snow by Stephen V Masse

About the Author
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Stephen V. Masse was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He wrote his first practice novel at age 13, handwritten into a school composition book. Educated at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he studied creative writing, and was author of a weekly newspaper column, "Out of Control." His first novel for children, Shadow Stealer, was published in 1988 by Dillon Press. He also runs a home remodeling business in the Boston area, and is active in the Santa Claus Anonymous charitable fundraiser.



Book Description
When winter arrives in the Austrian Alps, eleven-year-old Nicole Kinders is given a candy cane by the mysterious shopkeeper, Boznik, who tells her that the candy cane is magic. After her first taste, it seems the whole world becomes more colorful, more delicious, and more dangerous. A quarrel between students on the tram home from school leads Nicole to intervene, beginning a frightening series of events that threaten Nicole. She finds herself losing the joy of holiday preparations, and realizes that the vexing secret she keeps is influencing every part of her life. She finds no help from the magic candy cane, and decides she must return it to the shopkeeper.


Our Book Review
A beautiful and heart warming story that I really enjoyed from the first page.  Full of Christmas wonder, I would like to think that every child would read this book, although 'christmas' themed this could be read at any time of year.  The story also brings alive the true meaning of family and love that binds each member together.

The story follows two sisters, Nicole and Ashley, from a lovely family who live in Austria.  On the way to school one day the girls visit the market keeper, Boznik, who gives Nicole a 'magic' candy cane.  As Nicole anticipates the full 'magic' to appear she fails to realise that the magic can show in many forms and believes that the candy cane has only brought her bad luck.  First she is attacked by golf balls by the nasty Brunheim boys (now her enemies) but luckily escapes with only bruising, she is then stricken by fever, missing church and St Nicholas festivities that she has been looking forward to for ages, but overcomes this and recovers, then the tragedy of the house fire which she luckily escapes from, gains help and saves the home of further damage, followed by the surprise visit of her Grandparents to save the day.

To make the nasty Brunheim boys suffer, Nicole decides to take the day off school and make them believe she is seriously ill following their golf ball target practice at her and her little sister, but she is caught in a mountain blizzard, tragedy sadly strikes and her world is turned upside down, will the magic appear once again to save the day? 

I loved how close the family were with each other, especially the two sisters, a lovely refreshing change.  The stories told by the girls father and grandfather were really interesting and cleverly had hidden messages for the children to pick up on and in the end helped Nicole survive.  The story is full of Austrian Christmas traditions for every reader to enjoy and would definitely bring the Christmas season alive and reminds you that magic moments can be taken for granted, they don't necessarily have a flashing signs.  As an added bonus the author has included a special recipes section at the end of the story with wonderful Christmas recipes.

A marvelous thought provoking story for young and 'old' readers, full of positivity, highly recommended.

Our Rating
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5 comments:

  1. I've already bought the Yuletide books, but....I just might have to drop in copy or two anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like a wonderful book. Thanks so much for sharing this review.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You really make this sound like something I would Love to ready. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I stopped back by to get the name of this book as I wanted to copy the name down so I could buy a copy to read to the grand children.
    Thanks again for the review.

    ReplyDelete

Always lovely to hear your comments xx

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