This is a pretty short tale, with lots of warmth and hope, a bit of sadness followed by happiness, suspicion followed by exoneration, a feeling of 'yes!' a few times, and with with feel-good moments. Totally suited to this time of year.
It's SO not the kind of tale that I would normally read, but it was free, so I decided to read it with an open mind, and found myself perking up and getting into it in around three pages when the author revealed that the main character was an ex-con who had just gotten out of prison, shortly before Xmas.
I kind of thought that I would end up skim-reading it just to be able to finish it and prove to myself that it hadn't been a waste of my time, but this was a really good read. Yes, it was a touch cheesy, but it had several characters and occurrences that restored faith in the ex-con's life, and she herself was not what she seemed, in the very nicest way. It wasn't all sweetness and roses, and times were hard, but time and time again I got to see the goodness of human nature, and I think that both God and Santa played some part in the tale.
My only tiny whinges with this are that 1) the font and formatting are pretty awful, and 2) it ended so abruptly that I thought that I must have missed a page, as one minute I was reading, and then the end of that paragraph turned into info about the author.
Still, it was an ending that was full of hope, and with the beginnings, though admittedly cheesily, of a HEA.
A really good read, which I would have overlooked - my loss - if it hadn't been a freebie.