A Christmas Home

September 17, 2012
Todd McCray and his family, especially beloved dog Christmas, have returned in Kincaid’s latest saccharine holiday tale (after A Dog Named Christmas). Todd has been working for years at the local animal shelter when he learns that it’s being shut down. With his best friend, Laura, he struggles to place the animals in homes before the shelter closes, and Todd becomes torn between a dairy job close to home and a dog-trainer job three hours away, a decision that is further complicated when he realizes that he and Laura may be more than friends. Kincaid’s retread to familiar themes of family, community, and the healing power of animals is full of ham-fisted pleas for the reader’s sympathies (“the girl was pressing a message into his hand: We’ll get through this. Together”) and dialogue that is either wooden (“ ‘I’m going to miss working here,’ Todd said. ‘I know you will, Todd. I’m going to miss volunteering and seeing you, Hayley, and Doc Pelot’ ”) or clichéd (“‘I’m putting it down, Laura,’ Todd said. ‘I’m putting it down’ ”) but fans will not be deterred.

October 1, 2012
The latest in Kincaid's series about a developmentally challenged young man and his penchant for helping dogs is pleasant enough, but breaks no new ground. Following on the heels of Kincaid's other novels about likable canines (A Dog Named Christmas, 2008, etc.), this book finds Todd McCray all grown up into a capable young man who works for the animal shelter in the quaint town of Crossing Trails. But both his job and the town's very existence are threatened when the major employer in Crossing Trails shuts down. Suddenly, the small town of 2,000 finds itself making major cutbacks and one of those is, by necessity, doing away with the small, but busy, animal shelter. Todd and his boss, Hayley, are told by the town's mayor that the shelter will shutter its doors no later than the first of the year, and it's already more than a week into December. Both take the news hard, especially since the shelter has dozens of homeless dogs and cats and very few options other than sending their animals to facilities that will kill them if they aren't adopted. With his parents, George and Mary Ann, his friend Laura and her service dog, Gracie, which Todd trained, and the assistance of other friends and residents of the tiny town, Todd looks for an alternative solution, promising none of the animals under his care will be forgotten. Kincaid, who obviously loves animals, presents a too-good-to-be-true community with a plot straight out of a television movie-of-the-week and then throws his characters through cliched hoops. Although the solutions the group finds along the way are way too easy to come by and never seem to have a downside, the characters and settings prove pleasant enough. The writing, which is simplistic, won't engage sophisticated readers, but for those seeking a slight, uncomplicated tale that can be read cover-to-cover in about a weekend and won't leave the reader searching for some deeper meaning, this book fits the bill and then some. Although rated for adults, Kincaid's writing level seems more compatible with young adult novels in both verbiage and complexity.

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June 15, 2012

No word yet on the plot here, but since Kincaid is the author of the beloved canine Christmas tales A Dog Named Christmas and Christmas with Tucker, you know what to expect. The dog on the cover looks like a white Labrador.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.