I read The Snow Globe in a very festive mood. The story was not exactly what I was expecting. When I get a book this length, I don’t expect Gone with the Wind style characterizations. But still, the breakneck speed of the three connected stories left me feeling disoriented, dizzy, and not very cheery.

Kylie Gray is in the roughest patch of her life. Her long-term boyfriend dumped her for her flaky sister, she’s out of a job, and flat out broke. Stopping impulsively at an antique store, she spies a snow globe with an interesting story. In the 1800s, a lonely man who had lost his wife in childbirth received the snow globe from a friend. When he shook the snow globe and looked into it, he saw a woman in it who reminded him of an angel. Then one day…the woman appeared in his store and they lived happily ever after.

Kylie is charmed by this story, so she forks the cash over and brings the ornament home. Nothing seems out of the ordinary with the snow globe, until one day she suddenly sees, in the snow globe, a vision of a man and a toy store someplace in Pike Place Market. She drags her friends Suzanne and Allison to find this toy store in Seattle. When she finds it, she sees this gorgeous guy named Craig Peters, the owner of the toy store and ex-corporate slave, and the rest is history.

Her friend Suzanne, witnessing these events unfold, is skeptical about the power of this snow globe. After all, she’s a high-powered realtor with a perfect life and an even more perfect job, and doesn’t have time to believe in such sentimental fluff. Except her life isn’t quite as she planned – her job is pretty great, but her husband seems to be unhappy with her, and her kids certainly aren’t treating her like the great mom she thinks she is.

So when Kylie gives her the snow globe, she is not particularly pleased. She is even less happy to see that suddenly a puppy appears in the snow globe – because she certainly doesn’t need a puppy to mess up her new rug. But things happen, and that puppy suddenly makes an appearance in her life, and she finds the true meaning of family and happiness. Convinced of the power of this magic snow globe, she gives it to Allison.

Allison is lonely and deeply unhappy. Her grandmother was her mother-figure, and when she died, it left a huge hole in her heart. When she receives the globe from Suzanne, she hopes for an answer to her pain, but nothing comes. Then her two friends drag her to the scene of the crime, the antique shop where Kylie first bought the snow globe, and she meets Mrs. Ackerman, the owner of the shop. And she thinks she might have found a kindred spirit.

Okay, so the idea of the story is nice and suitably cheesy. But it is so incredibly short, especially divided into three parts, that all the characters are hollow and very, very stereotyped and they have cheesy conversations to make the reader understand what they’re feeling Right. Now. The story is like a checklist of nice, holiday scenes that the author wanted to get through, and boy, does she get through them efficiently.

I always feel a bit Bah! Humbug-y when I don’t like or give good grades to holiday books, especially when it is very obvious that the author had an awesome time writing the book. It’s just that The Snow Globe didn’t at all translate into a story infused with much genuine warmth, and the hefty price tag doesn’t help. For that, I must give it an average grade.