The Christmas Cookie Club

by Ann Pearlman

I am the head cookie bitch and this is my party.

So begins Marnie’s tale of girlfriends, heartbreak, and, of course, cookies. Marnie hosts a holiday cookie exchange every year, and the exchange includes several rules, which I won’t bother discussing.

Anyway, I am the head reading bitch, and this is my review of The Christmas Cookie Club. This is one terrible novel. On so many levels. Here are a few of my gripes with this terrible waste of time:

The cookie recipes are not good. None of them sound remotely appealing to me, and I love cookies. Some of the recipes aren’t even for COOKIES. Also, one recipe is for the assembling of store bought cookies into the shape of cheeseburgers. Yuck!

The basic writing is not good. There are punctuation errors galore. It appears to be a first draft of a novel, not a published novel from Simon & Schuster.

The style and structure of the novel are not good. I love the idea of a cookie recipe followed by a story about the cookie baker. Here’s where the author goes wrong: each story is told by the narrator, Marnie. Marnie is not the most appealing narrator. Why not write each chapter from a different point of view? Also, each chapter is concluded by an essay by a random cookie ingredient (ginger, cinnamon, chocolate, butter, etc.). Why??? The essays are super boring and really don’t seem to fit with the rest of the writing.

In conclusion, I’ve decided that I could write a book like this, but better. Maybe I will. After all, of the four Meyer sisters, I am the head cookie baking bitch!

12/3/09