Martenson did an outstanding job of bringing each character to life according to their age and kept their reliance on God true and authentic. In fact, the entire story is filled with gems of truth without preaching and is fun, heart-wrenching, and satisfying.

The Christmas Cactus depicts entertaining real-life family scenes, shares sincere heart-searching conversations with the Lord, and gives you a taste of farm life in Washington Territory in the 1870s.

The Christmas Cactus is a warm, delightful story that takes place in the late 1800's. After being abandoned, Katie Jo and her siblings find themselves homeless on the frontier. A kind farmer offers to help them which changes the trajectory of their lives.

This is the perfect cozy Christmas story for anyone who enjoys sweet romances, charming characters, and plucky heroines who are know to wield frying pans on occasion to protect their family.

The plot twist surprised me! I couldn't put the book down, wanting to find out the ending.
Christy created characters so likeable in Katie Jo and Jamie that I wish I knew them in real life.

As I edited The Christmas Cactus, I found the simplicity, depth, and wholesomeness of the story to be very refreshing.

Christy's stories are wholesome for the soul and spirit, and The Christmas Cactus is her most delightful work yet. Her characters are so obviously drawn from realistic personalities that they truly live on the pages, and their struggles and development is superbly true-to-life. There are many stories, particularly romance stories, that feel canned, stale or simply scripted emotionally, but Christy's work never falls into that category.

The romance in this story is so gentle and real, it almost sneaks up on you as you read! The relationships and personalities are genuine, the story and character development is excellent, and the characters provide superb role models for young adults; the heroine, Katie Jo, is a beautiful picture of true, deep, tender & God-fearing womanhood, and I look forward with much eagerness to share this treasure of a book with my future children.