#REVIEW - The Christmas Grandma Ran Away From Home by Nancy Warren

Description:

For every woman who's ever felt overwhelmed and under-appreciated at Christmas comes the story of a decent woman, a widowed grandmother, respected matriarch of a big, noisy family who snaps one holiday season and decides to run away for the holidays. Little does she realize what adventures are in store.

Long time widow Sandy Forbes is breaking out this Christmas. In her 71 years on earth she has stuffed and cooked 55 Christmas turkeys, baked hundreds of pies, turned out thousands of shortbread cookies and hoisted enough pine trees in her living room to reforest the Amazon.

Her family love her. They come to her for every occasion, eating, drinking, squabbling and then leaving her with a mass of dishes andcrumpled holiday wrap. But this is the year everything changes. When she wants someone else to take over for one year, the family lays a big guilt trip on her and Grandma rebels. Sandy’s giving herself a gift this Christmas. She’s running away from home for the holidays.

MY TAKE:

5 STARS!

I picked this book on my own because the cover and title caught my eye! This book is a hilarious in the beginning because you just can’t help but laugh out loud at this family’s reaction to Grandma’s decision NOT to cook Christmas dinner this year! When she tells the family, I was in stitches over some of their reactions, and you will be, too! This would be her 56th christmas dinner cooking a turkey, and it’s time for a change for her for many reasons I believe many women can resonate with! This is a serious reality for many women who do always get stuck hosting all of the holiday dinners when no one else in the entire family gives it a second thought, nor do they ever offer to host the holidays dinners, or bring a dish themselves, and the worse part is it’s taken for granted!

I think this is a great book to bring this issue out into the open for all the women who are at the end of their rope with this! It’s not ‘just’ that ‘one’ day of cooking. It’s the expected, the holiday decorating, the cleaning of the house only for it to get trashed the day of, the shopping, being the mediator for all the issues between ALL the  relatives who have issues with each other prior to the event, during and after, or those who like to cause issues while amongst the family the day of. There is doing all the cooking the day before and the day of, and in the end to be left with mounds of dishes no one has even offered to help to clean up, a filthy house, and pure exhaustion! All of this is tiring for anyone at any age, but Grandma is not a spring chicken anymore! Grandma is 70-72yrs old! (I found a little editing error about her age in three different places, but does it really matter? No.) In this extremely short novella, Grandma decides to take control of her ‘own life’ this year and decides she is NOT going to cook the turkey christmas  dinner #56 this year. Instead, Grandma is going to do something and go away somewhere she wants to go! . . . but where? She still works at the post office, so she goes through the postcards there until she comes upon one that has a beautiful sounding name. This city seems to be calling her name, which is Blossom Creek, Oregon! That’s IT! That is where Grandma is going!

Grandma’s kids, however, have a COW! They are LIVID at her. What? Grandma is NOT cooking the Christmas turkey for dinner this year? What’s wrong with her, as they bicker with her back and forth! They think she’s lost it, so much so the family doctor knows about her trip before she even tells him and he asks her if she thinks it might be Alzheimer’s disease! Oh! This is sad for poor Grandma. ALL this woman has done for her family ALL these YEARS and not ONE person even offers to cook the meal for her instead of her cooking it again? Family!

I can relate to this woman! Bless her heart for doing it ALL these years all on her own and never complaining once before! I could see my own mother cook turkeys and hams year after year, every single holiday, too, with the entire family depending on only ‘her’ cooking it and you could see how tired she was in her face when the meal was over. She was a little at fault about that, though. She would not allow anyone else to bring a dish. She would say this is not a potluck dinner, it’s a family dinner. (Okay?) When I was able to do that type of cooking, I did it, too, and it is tiring no matter what age you are, and here we have a woman who is 70-72 years of age who is just tired of ‘the family and the stuff that goes with it’, she just needs a break! I don’t blame her one ounce for not needing to go out of town to get out of cooking . . . again!. It’s a  thankless job! Sure, everyone says it’s, ‘Oh, so good’, and hopefully they thank you by helping with the dishes, but she doesn’t even get that! Instead one year her family had a fight/combined food fight in her house! That was the real reason behind this decision - she had had it! NO ONE ELSE EVER OFFERS TO COOK! By ALL means, Granny, RUN!

Run she did! When she got to her destination, she felt a bit overwhelmed. She had to do things she has not done before, but it was a new world to her. She ended up loving it! The place she chose to stay was nice, and Grandma even finds a HUGE SURPRISE there! This is well-worth the very short read! You might even enjoy this so much you’ll want an entire book about Grandma when this one is done! This little novella is worth every penny of the 99cents it cost to read!
Enjoy!
Laurie