I enjoyed this book about a man given a 2nd chance to right the stuff he got wrong during his life after he dies of a heart attack at 32. There was some angst. The hero grew and changed for the better. The heroine did get a bit too sicky sweet and self sacrificing. Still a nice read. ( )

All this talk about angels and miracles is just not my thing... Didn't read the description, this was just from an awards list. Guess I need to pay more attention to the jackets.

Wonderful romance with a hero (Emerson MacVey) who died at thirty-two of a heart attack and is given a second chance to possibly redeem himself by helping those he wronged on Earth. And he gets a month to do this, (from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve) along with being able to grant three miralces to three different people.

He gets sent back down to Earth in a different body (new name--Gabriel Falconi, a dark, handsome hunk compared to his old self, which was thin, shorter, blond, patrician, a yuppie) and meets up with Carrie Alexander whose life he ruined with his selfish, cold ways. (He arrives in Angel Falls, Minnesota, in an old beat up pick-up truck and accidentally drives off the road in a snowstorm and gets stuck in a ditch. While looking for help he notices a house. When he arrives at the house he gets invited in by Carrie herself who is having a Thanksgiving dinner with some friends and she invites him to stay. She thinks he looks like a Renaissance sculpture--a Botticelli angel.) After this, he stays in Angel Falls and tries to begin to right the wrongs he has made.

I liked Carrie, she was a sweet and warm heroine, always looking out for her friends. She had been in love with Emerson, who deeply wronged her, and she can't figure out why Gabriel, who looks nothing like Emerson, reminds her so much of him. I also liked Gabriel, even though I hated his previous incarnation (the heartless Emerson). I really liked the other characters in the book, the friendly people of Angel Falls. And it was fun seeing the stern Augusta/Gertrude pop up here and there.

This was a fantastic, original, and heartwarming holiday read! ( )

I've been slowly picking up Anne Stuart's backlist. This one's from 1993, and it won the 1994 RITA award for Best Futuristic/Fantasy/Paranormal Romance. It was well-deserved.

Emerson MacVey was a ruthless, greedy, uncaring man, until he had a massive heart attack and died at the age of 32. Now, 17 months after his death, he has one last chance of avoiding hell--he'll return to earth in another body, and within one month, he has to make amends to 3 people whose lives he destroyed. The fine print: he gets 3 miracles--one per person, and there'll be someone there to keep an eye on him, and he can't tell anyone who he is or why he's there.

The first person, and the only one whose name he's told, is Carrie Alexander. She'd been his secretary for 3 months, and he fired her on Christmas Eve. She was also the only person who'd cried when he died.

Carrie had thought she'd seen the good hidden under Emerson's cold exterior, and she'd fallen in love with him. And when her hometown's only industry was collapsing, she thought she saw a way to help both him and her town, since his business was buying and selling businesses. Instead, he bought it and closed it down, dooming the town, and broke her heart.

Now she's being eaten up by the guilt, and making amends in the only way she can think of--being the town's resident angel.

So when Gabriel Falcone's car ran into a ditch near Angel Falls, Carrie was the one who looked after him.

Falling Angel is a sweet story of love and redemption, sort of a cross between A Christmas Carol and Heaven Can Wait. But it avoids the saccharine sappiness of so many Christmas redemption romances, by making the emotions real rather than forced, and by giving both characters real dilemmas instead of simply the expected self-sacrifice.

Carrie's not just your usual milquetoast altruistic heroine, and Emerson/Gabriel isn't just your usual hero who only seems unfeeling because he hasn't yet learned to love. They're a lot more 3-dimensional than that. The rest of the town is likewise real, and because of that, you care about what happens to them.

This is, I think, the quintessential Christmas romance--it's what so many stories aspire to, but so few completely achieve. ( )

http://jacescribbles.blogspot.com/2008/01/falling-angel-by-anne-stuart.html ( )