This is the final Christmas Book from the Vintage Classics Dickens at Christmas.

It sucks that I'm rating this so low, but, in all honesty, I have no idea what was going on in the story. As usual, I really liked Dickens' writing style. His descriptions are so beautiful; I specifically loved the opening and closing to the story when he was describing portrait of the man that hangs under the wreath of holly, watching over all of the characters. But the middle left me disappointed. If you asked me to summarise this, I'd have a very hard time. The summary online didn't help much either. I wanted to enjoy it because of the supernatural elements to the plot (as I thought it'd tie in well with A Christmas Carol), but I just couldn't understand what was going on and why.

Again, this wasn't a Christmas book to me. It was set around the Yuletide season, but it wasn't specifically about Christmas. The only true Christmas book from this collection is A Christmas Carol, as well as the short stories from the periodicals. So, I'm a little ugh about this collection as a whole.

As with the last few Dickens stories I've read, I found the characters quite surreal, which made it hard to properly enjoy. I liked the premise though.

I'd read this before but I guess it didn't really sink in that it's sort of the Dickens precursor to "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

This wasn't my favourite Dickens book. Not a patch on A Tale of Two Cities.

Oof Charles.

I understand the overall point of the story, but I found that this was incredibly all over the place, and, I'd hate to say it, dull.

I could see how, when partnered together in a collection, there are similarities between "A Christmas Carol" and this story, but this one is just so much the inferior. I read "A Christmas Carol" every year around the holidays, and I thought I'd enjoy something else by his as well. Unfortunately, I did not.

A good little short story about a man haunted by his past who has the chance to forget. I haven't read any of Dickens Christmas stories, but honestly, it's super spooky and written very hauntingly, and then at the end, it switches to "oh and a very merry bright happy christmas was had." (not a direct quote lol). But the message was genuine and enjoyed it.

So. This was bad..