Things could be going better for Emma Holloway, she is dumped by her boyfriend and then gets knocked over by a parcel delivery van. To add insult to injury, the delivery van was actually delivering a parcel for her.
Contained within the parcel was ‘The Book’ sent to Emma to help her make some decisions. The only decision now is getting well again and it is going to a long process as Emma finds herself back at Hope Cottage with her eccentric grandmother and two equally as eccentric aunts nearby.
Now ‘The Book’ is back at Hope Cottage we start to see the magic that it may have and that perhaps the way to health, happiness and the future is to bake it. Trouble is magic can be seen as witchcraft and it seems these women are known locally and feuds and disputes go back years, hundreds of years.
So it will not help Emma, when her first love arrives back on the scene and happens to be from a family who hold onto family folklore and certainly don’t believe in magic.
But perhaps when faith is tested, people will look to any means to aid them. Can hope be restored from the pages of the book, the walls of the cottage and Emma and her grandmother?
This is a wonderful tale of love and hope, of believing in something you perhaps cannot explain but know is right. Emma’s story starts quite abruptly and her injuries from the accident that find her back at Hope Cottage were frightening and life altering, but it made her think a lot more about her life up until that point. The author uses this in the form of flashbacks so we can see how Emma found herself to be away from her family home, how her mother made the same decisions that she had and how the presence of something unexplainable can actually cause deep resentment in a community.
The book has everything you want from a Christmas novel and more, strong female characters recognising the fact that it is okay to be different, a sprinkling of snow and romance and delicious baking to wake up the tastebuds.
Perfect reading in the run up to Christmas and you cannot go wrong with Lily Graham’s novels as I have read and enjoyed everyone. A wonderful storyteller.
Thank you to the publisher via netgalley for the opportunity to read this novel.
Christmas at Hope Cottage is out today!
The Book Jotter 