I really liked this book, and particularly enjoyed the heroine calling the villainess a harpy! I've been a long-time Betty Neels fan. One thing I noticed--I had never read the Fifth Day of Christmas before, and just picked up a reprinted copy. I noticed this one was 186 pages. Her older books (this one is from 1971) usually were longer. I wonder if they cut out sections to make the book shorter? I noticed that throughout the book references are made to Julia baking bread, but the bread baking was not mentioned at the beginning of the book, when she was snowed in. So, I looked at some older versions of the book online, and I noticed that they were 225 pages. Therefore, if you purchase a Betty Neels book at the store, it might be prudent to see the age of the book/number of pages etc. It was also interesting in this version, I noticed that although a polio epidemic was taking place, common in the early 70's perhaps, there was one reference to playing a CD. Overall, I really loved this book, though I do feel like I didn't have the complete version, and I noticed some grammatical errors, perhaps as a result of poor editing. I'd be curious if anyone else noticed this in other reprints.
