Title: Nice but formulaic
Product review: After reading some of Connie Willis' other work I was excited to read more. Her forward on avoiding the tropes of X-mas stories further bolstered my hope that this would be something special. However, the first story written violates pretty much every trope she mentions just pages before the story, and everything else seems like a variant of another story you had heard.This gave me the feel of stories she made up for her family on x-mas eve, not something that she put as much thought into as her full stories. Things ended up feeling a little underdeveloped, and what could have been magical became just passable.
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