The book starts in the New Year in the village of Hope Christmas where after a great Christmas three very different families have very different issues in the year ahead but merge together to be the best of friends.
Pippa has a wonderful loving family but with a daughter who is wheelchair bound with cystic fibrosis finds that her life is always busier than she ever felt possible. When her husband Dan suffers a terrible accident her world and her family is completely torn apart.
Marianne is a teacher with gorgeous young twins and a stepson she adores. Her husband's ex-wife makes their life as difficult as she possibly can, so balancing everything while constantly trying to keep everyone happy is tricky for her.
And finally there is Cat, who with four children, a mother with dementia and a cookbook to write constantly has tons on her plate. When Mel her eldest daughter starts behaving particularly badly and she tries to find out why, she ends up with even more problems to deal with than she ever thought possible.
These three wonderful women all help each other get through what really is a difficult year for each of them, through the seasons of the year ending up at the following Christmas.
The book is about family, friendship, motherhood and love. Written beautifully by Julia Williams, this is a fabulously festive book set in the village of Hope Christmas. The start of the year is a good one and these women could never imagine the problems that they would have to face throughout the coming year.
They cheer each other up, they cry on each other's shoulders, they give advice, they listen, they depend upon and are generally there for each other through thick and thin, through good and bad. Not only are they amazing women, they are also fantastic mothers who put their children above and before anything else in their lives.
Friendships are incredibly important in life, and when you get good ones, you should hang onto them for as long as your lives allow you to. I'm blessed to have been lucky enough to experience some amazing friendships throughout my life as well as having a wonderful Mom. Hope you have been lucky in these respects too.
The way that Julia wrote this book made me want to up and move sticks to the amazing village of Hope Christmas and live in one of these gorgeous farmhouses that I could so easily picture. I wanted to become friends with these three sparky and gutsy women and sit around the table with a glass of wine and discuss life and issues while our kids were playing in another room.
Julia really does have such a fabulous way of putting words together which allow you to conjure up so many images and almost act out her book in your mind.
This was a beautifully warm, cosy, delightful book that I couldn't put down; I was totally and completely engrossed and wrapped up within the story. It was yet another wonderful book which has filled me full of Christmas spirit!
I reviewed The Summer Season by Julia Williams earlier this year, and that review can be found here.
Julia Williams has always made up stories in her head and until recently she believed everybody else did the same. She grew up in London, one of eight children including a twin sister. She was a children's editor at Scholastic for several years before going freelance after the birth of her second child. It was then she decided to try her hand at writing. The result was Pastures New, which was her debut novel. It was a best seller and sold across Europe.
To find out more about Julia go to her website at www.JuliaWilliamsauthor.com
You can visit her blog at www.maniacmum.blogspot.com
You can follow Julia on Twitter
You can flike Julia on Facebook
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