Lizzy loves Christmas and she loves her family, but when they decide that their lives are slightly more important than family tradition at Christmas Lizzy has had enough.
She leaves a note and decamp to The Beach Hut.
Harley knows he cannot live a moment longer with Tony, his stepfather. If he does he will be pushed to take action which won’t help his mother, Leanne or little brother River.
Harley decides to leave and decamp to The Beach Hut.
Jack decides he wants to have a different Christmas this year with his young son Nat. Still grieving for his wife, he sees this Christmas as the start of something new.
Jack decides to leave his family behind and decamp to The Beach Hut.
Of course these three sets of characters and their backstories are all thrown together especially as Christmas is going to be very different this year.
This is a heartwarming story and ideal for Christmas reading. Lizzy embraces the mild panic (that many probably feel) when having to be the main organiser of Christmas and it is not until someone stops doing something do the rest of the family realise how much she does. It was bittersweet to watch how Lizzy’s husband Simon and the twins, Hattie and Luke suddenly feel completely lost without that one person to ground them all. Add into the mix a secret Lizzy is hiding and it might be Christmas will not ever be the same again.
Harley, devastated that his father is now incarcerated and not even allowed to mention him in front of his mother is struggling to cope with being an adult. To take himself out of a situation but watch as his mother and brother still suffer with a different type of incarceration means he feels helpless at what he can do. Sometimes strangers put things in perspective and help in unexpected ways.
I fell adorably in love with Jack and Nat. The father struggling to be a single dad to Nat, who though misses his mum just simply wants to make sure that Father Christmas will know they are at the beach hut. Even if it does not have a chimney. When Jack and Nat are welcomed by Lizzy and Harley, it seems that you can perhaps see life in a different way and that the future does not necessarily have to be so bleak.
This is a great Christmas read and a wonderful example of Veronica Henry’s writing. A great place to start if you have never read anything by this author before. She has some real gems of novels and this is certainly one of them!
Thank you to the publisher via netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.
Christmas at The Beach Hut is out now.
And I must get round to reading more Veronica Henry!
The Book Jotter 