Rating: 
Summary: A nice holiday read
Review: While parts of the book are somewhat unbelievable, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it -- I read 80% of it in one night. It is a great escape from the holiday stresses. The reader shouldn't expect the book to be comparable to Baldacci's other novels. It was obviously written to compete with Grisham's Skipping Christmas. While the feel-good emotion is the same, this one is better than Skipping Christmas because of the combination of love, mystery, humor, and soul-searching.
Rating: 
Summary: Author needs to work on writing dialogue
Review: The idea behind this book's alleged plot could have been interesting, if contrived. Tom Langdon is forced to travel cross-country via train due to a "misunderstanding" at the airport. Along the way, he meets his ex-girlfriend, who walked out on him many years ago on Christmas Eve when the two were reporters together in Tel Aviv. He also meets many other characters that are supposed to be endearing, from fellow passengers to train staff to a hotshot Hollywood director.So far, so good. But the characters are never developed, and their dialogue is abysmal! Especially with his women characters, nothing they say is funny, and often the writing made me cringe with embarassment for the author. The black women character's dialogue made them sound like caricatures--complete with "honey chile"s and repeated references to Aretha Franklin. It bordered on insulting. Even worse was Tim Matheson's ridiculous reading of this insipid tale. He gave all women characters a southern accent. The worst was his treatment of a little boy named Oscar. He lisped so much I almost could see spit coming out of my car radio as I drove and listened to this seemingly endless Christmas "drama". I give the author credit for his love of train travel--that love shines through in this book and is its one bright spot. Otherwise though, I advise Mr. Baldacci to attend a writer's clinic on dialogue! Try thinking about how people actually talk and go from there. With dialogue as bad as that in "The Christmas Train", you will never write a decent novel.
Rating:
Summary: It's Different!!
Review: This book is not what I expected, but it was different. It did keep my interest-but I was just a tiny bit disapointed. The end was predictable-no surprises there.Its an O.K. book but could be better
Rating: 
Summary: Was this a children's book?
Review: Wow, what a disappointment. This book reads like a children's book. Contrived, simple minded and sticky sweet are the first adjectives that come to my mind in describing this book. It was a painful read and if not for the fact that I just can't make myself quit reading a book once I start it, I would have it put it down early on. One very good thing, it wasn't a long book. David, I love your past work, but this one ran "off the tracks."
Rating:
Summary: This can't be Baldacci's work.
Review: I won't repeat the comments made by other reviewers, because I agree with them that this book is a big disappointment. I have read all of his other books and enjoyed them. I have the sneaky feeling that his 14-year-old daughter wrote this, and as a loving Dad he wanted to make her happy. His name got it to the publisher's, but it's still a book written by an adolescent.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Christmas Read
Review: This book was so good! I felt drawn in by Baldacci's descriptions of all the characters and their happenings on the train. If you need a great book with lots of things to keep you reading, this is the one for you. I loved this book. I even want to take a train trip now!
Rating: 
Summary: The Christmas Train~
Review: Not having read a Baldacci book before, I had no prior expectations when reading The Christmas Train. It looked like a fun holiday read. When I first started reading it, the writing did seem sort of elementary, but once I allowed myself to get into the story more, the pages flew by fast & I found it to be an entertaining read. Baldacci does paint a cozy setting aboard a train, as people are headed towards their Christmas destinations. The Christmas Train isn't deep, but it is an entertaining and fast read. The story is a combo of a love story/a bit of a mystery/and a history of the train system. If you take it for what it is, a purely fun & entertaining light read you may end up enjoying it. It was a perfect read for the hoidays.
Rating:
Summary: Trying too hard
Review: DB tries too hard on this one. It's meant to be a light hearted Christmas story, but the laughs are forced and come off as too cliche. The Christmas spirit is the only thing that got me through it, and the fact that it's only 250 pages.
Rating:
Summary: It was OK, but nothing special
Review: This was an OK book, but it wasn't the quality I was hoping for. There are several interesting characters, but I don't think that they are developed enough so that we really care about them. I did find myself eagerly turning pages to find out what would happen next, so there is a nice level of suspense to this story. I am usually pretty good at guessing endings, but the ending of this book did catch me off guard. I don't think anyone could have guessed the twist at the end, but because it was a little too wacky I didn't really enjoy the surprise that much.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly badly written -- not nearly as good as his others
Review: Admittedly, I had high expectations, having read almost everything Baldacci has published, and after browsing reader reviews here. But this one just doesn't cut it for me.
The plot is straight from the Canterbury Tales, without the depth of interest. The style is circa Mark Twain, but (in this book at least) D.B. lacks Twain's wit or his wisdom. The novel is so badly written I didn't care about the plot or the characters, just wanted it to be over. So it was, about 2/3 of the way through.
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