The Christmas Cat
The Christmas Cat Anthology
My True Love Gave to Me by Julie Beard
A Gift of Light by Jo Beverley
Home for the Holidays by Barbara Bretton
The Gift of Christmas Past by Lynn Kurland
The Gift of Christmas Past by Lynn Kurland is a time travel story with a feline guardian angel bringing two people together during the holiday season.
Abigail Garrett is missing her cat Sir Sweetums as the holiday season approaches. She doesn't know that when she follows her cat, not knowing that it is a ghost, she will find a lot more than she expected.
Falling into a pond is never a great thing to do but when the fall results in you surfacing hundreds of years in the past it is just that much worse.
Thankfully Abigail surfaces in the moat of the keep of Miles de Piaget, a man who wants to be left alone during the holidays and is allergic to cats...even those of the ghostly variety.
Miles has returned from the crusades disillusioned and having come dangerously close to being burned for heresy. He doesn't want to be with his family for the holidays and has sent all the guardsmen his father had sent to him back home to Artane. But even a disillusioned knight can't leave the strange woman who has appeared at his keep out in the cold.
A nice little Christmas story with a very interesting cat.
Standing on its own the story is okay, if a little short, as most anthology stories are. However when you tie it in with other books about the de Piaget family there are some inconsistencies.
Firstly, the year is 1238 and Miles is 24 years old. Nothing strange in that in and of itself. But when you look at Dreams of Stardust and When I Fall in Love (not sure about If I Had You without checking) you see that that would make Miles thirteen and fifteen respectively in those two novels. Unfortunately this is not the case and even his younger twin siblings were fifteen and seventeen in those stories.
Of course there is always the possibility that he has lost some years due to time travelling himself...especially since that is the other inconsistency. Miles in this story knows nothing of the future, of time travel or anything else but the world that he lives in...or at least he doesn't seem to, even within his own thoughts. But according to the timeline of events by the time Abigail appears in his keep two of his siblings (at the time of typing this review at least) have married time travellers from the future and he is well aware of the same.
All in all it makes this story a nice one when it is considered on its own but rather confusing when you take into account the entire de Piaget timeline.
To date, this is the only anthology story by Ms Kurland that has not been re-released in another set. I wonder if it will be and whether it might be re-written at any point to take into account the events that take place in later novels but earlier in the timeline.
RATING : 
(if you need an explanation of the hearts ratings see my homepage)
Also by Lynn Kurland:
Another Chance to Dream (Historical)
If I Had You (Historical)
This is All I Ask (Mostly Historical)
From this Moment On (Mostly Historical)
To Kiss in the Shadows (Mostly Historical) - Available separately or as part of the Tapestry Anthology
The Icing on the Cake (Contemporary) - part of the Opposites Attract Anthology and the Love Came Just in Time Anthology
The Nine Kingdom's series (Fantasy)
Visit Ms Kurland's website and take a look at the family tree to see how many of her books tie in together.
Read an interview with Lynn Kurland
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