Thrilled to host one of today's stops on this Blog Tour
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Wild Fox Press 24 October 2020 My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book and to Rachel's random Resources for my invitation to be part of this blog tour today |
Can peace be made with the past this Christmas?
As the anticipation of Christmas builds in the Nielsen family’s cosy farmhouse, Jo, Magnus and their grown-up children begin to congregate for a hybrid Danish-Jersey festive season, each with a surprise of their own – though the surprise that arrives on Christmas Day is something nobody could have predicted.
Fifty years earlier, in 1969, Susan finds herself being pursued by Mr Jenners, her former English teacher, and at the age of seventeen is packed off to a Home for Unmarried Mothers in London by her uncompromising father. As Christmas approaches, all she can do is desperately hope to be rescued, but will anyone be able to reach her in time,
The two timelines of this festive story gradually weave together in a tale that examines whether love and hope can eventually triumph over even the deepest sadness.
🎄What did I think about it..
This story is so Christmassy that you can almost smell the chestnuts roasting and Christmas lunch gently steaming in the Aga. Throughout this gentle drama there is a lovely feel of family, true, this is definitely a family with secrets, but when it counts they all pull together, with parents, Jo and Magnus, doing their best to keep their Jersey-Danish family traditions alive.
It's not all about the here and now as there's also an intriguing story arc which features teenage mother, Susan, who on discovering that she is pregnant in 1969 is sent off to have the baby at a home for unmarried mothers, a story which is both poignant and heartbreaking in equal measure. The author does a wonderful job of bringing these two stories into sharp focus, I was equally interested in joining in with Christmas at the Farmhouse with Jo, Magnus and the family as I was in travelling with Susan on her rather sad story in the 1960s.
The author writes well and builds up towards the Christmas surprise with a lovely light touch, making Christmas at the Farmhouse such a cosy, warmhearted, festive read.
About the Author
Rebecca Boxall was born in 1977 in East Sussex, where she grew up in a vicarage always filled with family, friends and parishioners. She now lives by the sea in Jersey with her husband, three children and Rodney the cat. She read English at the University of Warwick before training as a lawyer and also studied Creative Writing with The Writer’s Bureau. She is the bestselling author of Christmas at the Vicarage, Home for Winter, Christmas on the Coast, The Christmas Forest and Christmas by the Lighthouse and was nominated for the Romantic Novelist Association Awards in 2020.
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