My True Love Gave To Me by various authors!

Hey, guys! I'm back with another review!
Enjoy!

                               Basics

Title: My True Love Gave To Me
Authors: Holly Black, Ally Carter, Matt de la Peña, Gayle Forman, Jenny Han, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Myra McEntire, Stephanie Perkins, Rainbow Rowell, Laini Taylor, Kiersten White

Release Date: October 9^th 2014
Publisher: Macmillan Children's books
ISBN-13: 978-1447272793
Number of Pages: 368
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
What's special? 12 cute Christmas stories!

Summary + Opinion

'My True Love Gave To Me' contains 12 festive short stories by various authors.

I'll rate every story in the book but only talk about the best and the worst story.
They are called:
- Midnights 4.5/5

- The Lady and the Fox 3.5/5

- Angels in the Snow 3.5-4/5
- Polaris Is Where You'll Find Me 2.5/5

- It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown 5/5
- Your Temporary Santa 3/5
- Krampuslauf 2/5
- What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? 3/5
- Beer Buckets and Baby Jesus 3.5-4/5
- Welcome to Christmas, CA 4/5
- Star of Bethlehem 3/5
- The Girl Who Woke the Dreamer 3.5/5

So, I'm going to talk about:
1) Midnights by Rainbow Rowell
2) Krampuslauf by Holly Black
3) It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown by Stephanie Perkins

'Midnights' by Rainbow Rowell
I'm a huge fan of Rainbow Rowell's work (I adore Fangirl) and I wasn't disappointed.
Both Mags and Noel are loveable characters and I really wish I had more to read about them.
We meet the characters in several years but always on December 31^st.
Every year since they've met, they go to a New Year's Eve Party and -actually, I can't really tell you more of the plot because there's not much more.
As always, Rainbow's writing is wonderful and you feel as if you stand right beside the characters. And every feeling Mags has during the years – I feel it, too.
Even though it's only a short story and you don't get too much information on the characters, I found a lot of myself in Mags. That's probably the reason why I love this story so much.

'Krampuslauf' by Holly BlackThis short story is about Hanna. She and her best friends take part in the so called 'Krampuslauf', where you have to dress up, to figure out if Penny's boyfriend really has another girlfriend besides her.
There Hanna meets a very good-looking boy with a perfect costume but he disappears really fast.
One thing leds to another. The girls spot boyfriend with other girlfriend and invite them to their spontaneous 'New Year's Eve Party'.
As a result, they now have to plan the party.
And things happen...

I didn't really like a) the writing. It confused me as compared to the other stories a lot.
You all know that English isn't my first language but normally I understand it pretty well.
And b) I didn't like where the story went. I'm not a huge fan of magical short stories, which I noticed while reading this book, just because I think it takes more than 20 pages to introduce the magic elements and solve everything happening at the end.
And right that went totally wrong in this shortstory. The supernatural elements were only shortly introduced and never really explained.
Everybody human around just accepts it and the reactions after a certain

incident were absolutely unrealistic.

'It's a Yuletide miracle, Charlie Brown' by Stephanie Perkins
This one is it, guys. My absolute favourite story of this book.

Marigold Moon Ling is visiting the Christmas Tree Lot out of a certain reason. The same reason she was visiting the lot the last whole month. And it's not searching for the perfect Christmas tree but searching for the perfect voice.
She creates animated videos and she has designed a new character who needs a voice. She already knows who should voice the part but she's afraid of asking him. It's the young worker named North of the Christmas Tree Lot.
More or less accidently she buys tree and he has to help her bring it home.
On the way home or rather at Marigold's house they get closer even closer – but not in the 'sexy time' meaning of closer but in the talking-a-lot-and-understanding-each-other-kind of it.

Stephanie Perkins. You genius.
The writing is absolutely fantastic! And North – oh my God *swoon* I'm in love. The story is only 36 pages long but it's enough to fall in love with him. Still: I NEED MORE PAGES.
But not only easy to fall in love with him but with Marigold, too. She's a really cool female character and I just love her name!

The town they live in has something hippie-like about it. So that's why they have such unique names.

North is a really kind guy. He's not one of these I-act-like-a-shitty-brat-but-I'm-hot-so-everybody-still-loves-me-dark-men which seem to be very popular right now but just a caring boy with a veeerrry deep voice.
And I love deep voices.
Have you watched 10 things I hate about you? Not the movie (it's great, too) but the series?
Patrick has such a deep voice! Sadly, he hardly speaks.

Rating

So even though, I didn't 'love' most of the stories, I will recommend this book to everyone who doesn't want to let the Christmas feeling pass or who needs a book for next Christmas season.
Rainbow Rowell and Stephanie Perkins contributed wonderful stories with adorable characters and they totally make up for the other short stories.3.5/5 stars

Have you already read the book? Tell me in the comments, how you liked it or rather which stories were your favourites!

Have a nice week and stay healthy.
Franzi