Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology, Volume One by J.P. Walker

Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology, Volume One Reviews

• 
  Ali

  This anthology was intense. The stories are not light and fluffy. They are raw and real. They are all excellent, but here are my favorites:
  
  A Midnight Clear: A runaway girl struggling to survive on the streets with a stray cat that adopted her. The man that sees her and offers her some cash, but then can't forget about her, and, along with his partner, searches the streets trying to find her.
  
  From All of Us to All of You: Simon works as a store clerk, dreading going to his parents' house for Christmas Eve and having to face his alcoholic father and his withdrawn codependent mother... But for a bid of meddling by his coworker Monica, he meets her son, Hannes... and well a bit of humor and pizza, and Simon discovers there's more to the holiday than sitting on the couch with his mom watching the traditional holiday movie...
  
  Shiny Things: Nathaniel returns home ten years after being kicked out by his father for kissing another boy. He returns to help his 19 year old brother care for his father (who now has alzheimer's) and ends up doing work for Vincent, the man who had been the boy he kissed.
  
  The Invasion of Tork: Wow! A homeless man in his early 20s fighting mental illness, meets up with an arrogant ass at a shelter. This story begs the question, who is helping whom...
  
  Xmas Cake: A rich man, kyle, has regular "dates" with a baker, Riley. The dates are just a smile and a wave as Kyle waits outside a theater and Riley closes up the bakery and walks to his car, which unbeknownst to Kyle, is serving as Riley's home... that is until Riley becomes ill and Kyle rushes in to help.
  
  All the stories are character driven. They give us glimpses of life that is not Donna Reed perfect but still embody the spirit of the holidays... whether it be Christmas or Chanukah or Kwanzaa or the Winter Solstice...
• 
  Amy Spector

  I'm finally sitting down to officially read Boughs of Evergreen start to finish! Since this is such a huge anthology, I will rate overall collection here and will add a more detailed review of the stories on their individual GR listings.
  
  The Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology is a collection of stories written by authors around the world, for charity and a hope for a better world for the next generation. It is the brain child of Debbie McGowan who is my hero.
  
  Volume One
  
  A Friend for Christmas - JP Walker
  A Midnight Clear - Debbie McGowan
  From All of Us to All of You - Ofelia Gränd
  Homme for the Holidays - Jonathan Penn
  Kiss Me At Kwanzaa - LL Bucknor
  Lion's Hero - Alexis Woods
  One Nightstand - Rick Bettencourt
  Shiny Things - Amy Spector
  The Bard and his Boyfriend - Kathleen Hayes
  The Christmas Present - Larry Benjamin
  The Invasion of Tork - Al Stewart and Claire Davis
  X-Mas Cake: A Modern Fairytale - Raine O'Tierney
  
• 
  Mark Loughe

  just the book you aught to be reading before christmas volume two nex year five stars from me
• 
  carol

  This has to be the best anthology of short stories I have read...so far!
  
  I see there is a Volume Two, and I shall now download it, knowing that proceeds go to a worthy charitable cause.
  This one’s proceeds is to The Trevor Project that seeks to help young LBGTQ youngsters in the USA at times of crisis.
  One day it would be great to think they wouldn’t be needed...but I fear that is some time in the future.
  
  I have reviewed each story individually and so won’t repeat here.
  This has been an anthology that I have dipped into now and again, as such it has taken a long time to get to the end story...all stories in my opinion rated from sound three up to five stars, and as such for the readaholic this is one to last, and good value for money, for quality of content it’s also very good, hence overall I have rated it as hitting my five star reads marker.
  Thanks to all authors for their contributions, I enjoyed reading them.
  
  Oops...seems I’ve made an error...I read the combined anthology so will post this again there.
• 
  Spinster

  I received Boughs of Evergreen as a Goodreads Giveaway some time ago. It was a little after the holiday season so the book being all about the end of the year holidays was just bad timing, and that's part of why it took me so long to finish.
  
  Boughs of Evergreen is a collection of short (romance) stories, focusing on LGBT love. It's difficult to review them all as one and doing it one by one would take forever, but some of the stories were better and others a bit less so. However, the most important thing of the collection, the one thing that truly shone from every story was pure happiness, joy, positiveness and uncomplicated love. It was most definitely a feel good book, celebrating diversity and not making a big deal out of being a little different. It feels like many books about LGBT people are about LGBTness, and while I get that, it's a big deal to be different from the majority, but I liked it when in the stories of this collection people just were what they were, no fuss about what precise flavor of which label, and the focus of the story itself was somewhere else. The characters were people rather than straight people or gay people. Just people.
  
  I might even go as far as calling the book sappy, but I don't think it's a flaw and I don't think the authors feel so either. A bit of sap is pretty much expected during the holiday season. I noticed many of the stories were about homelessness and realised it is a very traditional theme associated with Christmas and warmth and abundance of food and stuff and love and joy.
  
  Overall Boughs of Evergreen was a very warm and fuzzy book and definitely worth of reading for those who need, want or would just like a bit of warmth and fuzz in their life.
• 
  K.C. Faelan

  Today I had time to start reading the stories from Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology. I'll be making my way through both volumes in random order. I'll be posting the individual book review and rating on it's respective book page. For this review, it's only on Volume One. Volume Two will have it's own review.
  
  Boughs of Evergreen is the brainchild of Debbie McGowan, publisher and editor at Beaten Track Publishing. The proceeds from the anthology are donated to the Trevor Project. Twenty-three authors from around the world contributed their time and talent to writing various holiday stories. I participated in this awesome endeavor, and my story appears in Volume Two, but I won't be reviewing it since I wrote it.
  
  
  Volume One
  
  A Friend for Christmas - JP Walker
  A Midnight Clear - Debbie McGowan
  From All of Us to All of You - Ofelia Gränd
  Homme for the Holidays - Jonathan Penn
  Kiss Me At Kwanzaa - LL Bucknor
  Lion's Hero - Alexis Woods
  One Nightstand - Rick Bettencourt
  Shiny Things - Amy Spector
  The Bard and his Boyfriend - Kathleen Hayes
  The Christmas Present - Larry Benjamin
  The Invasion of Tork - Al Stewart and Claire Davis
  X-Mas Cake: A Modern Fairytale - Raine O'Tierney
• 
  Tailtiu

  3,5* Part of the 2 book in one
  Boughs of Evergreen: Holiday Anthology