{"id":31695,"date":"2023-12-17T12:43:05","date_gmt":"2023-12-17T18:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=31695"},"modified":"2023-12-16T08:43:48","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T14:43:48","slug":"book-report-a-knights-bridge-christmas-by-carla-neggers-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/17\/book-report-a-knights-bridge-christmas-by-carla-neggers-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>A Knights Bridge Christmas<\/i> by Carla Neggers (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/aknightsbridgechristmas.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">As you know, gentle reader, I like to read a Christmas novel around Christmas time, and I generally pick them up at various places throughout the year, maybe one or two a year (I bought this one in Arkansas <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/01\/good-book-hunting-arkansas-june-2023\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">this summer<\/a>).  But when they go into the Nogglestead to-read stacks, well, they&#8217;re often lost for a very long time and especially hide well during November and December.  A couple of nights I went to the stacks specifically looking for a Christmas book and could not find one.  So when we were preparing to go to ABC Books for a book signing, I told my beautiful wife that I hope Mrs. E. had Christmas books.  At which point she swiveled in the chair she was sitting in and said, &#8220;What about this one?&#8221;  This book was there all along!<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, the book is one of a series which deals with the town of Knights Bridge, Massachussetts.  A new librarian moves to town from Boston with her precocious and abnormally adult-like six year old son six years after the death of her husband in an automobile accident.  She meets the hard-charging emergency room doctor grandson of a longtime Knights Bridge resident who has moved into an old folks&#8217; home when the doctor returns to help with the grandmother&#8217;s move.  She (the librarian) promises to help the doctor decorate the grandmother&#8217;s house one last time.  Could they&#8211;<em>fall in love?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>C&#8217;mon, man, this is a holiday romance.  That&#8217;s exactly what happens!  <\/p>\n<p>The book really has absolutely no conflict though.  I mean, the townsfolk look down on the doctor a bit because they think he neglected his grandmother.  The librarian wonders if she&#8217;s ready for the romance or if she would be just a conquest for the doctor who would leave her life forever.  But it&#8217;s all unserious internal conflict that gets mentioned in the protagonists&#8217; interior monologues fairly briefly.  There&#8217;s no antagonist to speak of.  Just some set pieces with a bit of idealized small-town Christmas season scenes and a bit of an underdeveloped back story about how the grandfather helped the great-grandfather get over his experiences in World War II, but&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Well, if you&#8217;re looking for a simple confection with holiday themes, here you go.  It has less depth than most of the Christmas books I&#8217;ve read, and the six-year-old boy is really wise beyond his years.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m not likely to charge out and get others in the series, but I am not the target audience anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you know, gentle reader, I like to read a Christmas novel around Christmas time, and I generally pick them up at various places throughout the year, maybe one or two a year (I bought this one in Arkansas this summer). But when they go into the Nogglestead to-read stacks, well, they&#8217;re often lost for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31697,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31695\/revisions\/31697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}