1225 Christmas Tree Lane by Debbie Macomber

1225 Christmas Tree Lane (Cedar Cove)
Synopsis:

The people of Cedar Cove know how to celebrate Christmas. Like Grace and Olivia and everyone else, Beth Morehouse expects this Christmas to be one of her best. Her small Christmas tree farm is prospering, her daughters and her dogs are happy and well, and her new relationship with local vet Ted Reynolds is showing plenty of romantic promise.But someone recently left a basket filled with puppies on her doorstep, puppies she's determined to place in good homes. That's complication number one. And number two is that her daughters, Bailey and Sophie, have invited their dad, Beth's long-divorced husband, Kent, to Cedar Cove for Christmas. The girls have visions of a mom-and-dad reunion dancing in their heads.

As always in life—and in Cedar Cove—there are surprises, too. More than one family's going to have a puppy under the tree. More than one scheme will go awry. And more than one romance will have a happy ending!

Review:

The main storyline in 1225 Christmas Tree Lane is Beth and Kent and how their daughters are trying to get them back together. This was the first Cedar Cove book I have read and while I gathered that most of the other characters had been in prior books, you didn't need to have read those to enjoy this one. However, the chapters not about Beth and Kent I tended to skim as there was way too much of every characters backstory, so if you had read the other books I imagine that could be even more annoying than I found it. I didn't really care about the other families since they only really had one chapter each in this book. I wish it would have been a shorter story and just focused on Beth and Kent. 

Beth and Kent kind of just drifted apart three years ago and got a divorce. There was not a sudden moment or horrible thing that happened. They both still love the other, but don't know how the other feels so nothing happens until their daughters convince Kent to come visit Beth for Christmas. Of course he brings a friend, whom Beth assumes is more than a friend especially when the friend plays that up, and so Beth tries to make him jealous with Ted and on and on. It was like man if no one breaks and actually tells the other what they think they will just go back to their lives the way they were pining away for the other. Luckily they have two daughters who are not about to let that happen. There part of the book were really sweet and I liked how everything got resolved, but the other characters chapters, as I said, were too much. Maybe if I knew the characters already it would have been fine, but as it was I didn't care if two of them got engaged or anything since I don't know them (and the story is not really about them). 

Overall it was a good story, but would have been a lot better had it just been Beth and Kent's story. I didn't care about the other characters story since I didn't know them and ended up skimming those chapters. 

Rating: 2/5