Christmas Jars

Where do I start? I wanted to read a short, sweet tale of giving. It didn't have to be a Christmas book, I just wanted a little story about people going outside of their own lives and giving to others.
I expected some cheese, and a little too much sweetness and light.
This story, however, was just so bad. So, so bad. It was like a traffic accident and I could NOT look away. Every time I thought it might redeem itself, it actually got worse.
Hope, despite the main character's name, is really missing from this story. Instead, we have a self absorbed mc who loses her mother and proceeds to stalk this perfect, perfect family for a year looking to fill the hole inside of her. It was creepy, unrealistic, and all based on a lie the mc tells the family in order to get through the front door. Had Hope put a rabbit in a pot to boil on the stove, I would not have been one bit surprised. The reader would have to be dead not to see that this woman is USING these people to make a family for herself AND to get her work on the front page of a newspaper.
The first sign that something was really, really wrong with this story, for me was the tale of the first woman who received a jar. She needed the money for fertility treatments because her marriage is failing because she cannot produce a boy child. Well, there is money well spent! Let's keep this woman trapped in marriage with an a-hole.
Adam and Lauren are just sooooo perfect. And in this story, either people are well off and perfect or poor and perfect.

Hope crashes the funeral of the patriarch (the author even referring to her as “the prodigal”) because of her own needs. At one point, the author must have realized how terrible this looked because Lauren even states, “Hey I'm the widow here.” Yet, Hope continues to make this all about her and her guilt. Even when Hope gives her own jar to a homeless guy in the park, he almost wont accept it because (I felt) he could tell she was completely insincere.
Not only does it end with a literal rip off of It's a Wonderful Life, the author adds in the reappearance of the missing mother. Gag, gag!

The real shame here is that the idea of a Christmas Jar is a really good one (and not a new one, for sure). It is just a shame that this story is connected to it.