A Christmas Caroline

September 4, 2006
It's Christmas Eve in uptown Manhattan; self-serving fashionista Caroline is a rude and spoiled narcissist who tramples on everyone's feelings. Caroline's ghosts of Christmas past, present and future are heralded not by Jacob Marley but by Caroline's dead, and equally stuck-up, roommate Carly: they arrive in the form of a spooky child actress, the UPS guy and a hooded, knitting Reaper in need of a manicure. Caroline's comeuppance comes with sprigs of wit and plenty of designer name-dropping.

October 15, 2006
Smith (Love Monkey) unsuccessfully tries his hand at chick lit. Caroline, the snooty editor of a shopping magazine, is short-tempered with everyone she meets and obsessed with labels. She is warned to change her ways by the ghost of her equally vacuous dead roommate, Carly. Smith's use of details from Charles Dickens's beloved A Christmas Carol is amusing but hardly makes it worth stomaching such unlikable characters. For larger fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/06.]

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.