*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.
Title: A Concert For Christmas
Author: Helen Hawkins
Genre: Holiday Romance
Rating: ★★
Schoolteacher Sophie Lawson has fled to the Cotswold countryside after a tragic break-up and is throwing herself into dating and organising Cranswell’s annual Christmas concert. The festive fun is marred by the arrival of a handsome but surly musical director, tricky pupils and concert preparations falling into disarray. Disaster strikes, but the show must go on. Will the concert bring Christmas harmony to Cranswell and will Sophie end the year on a high note?
A Concert For
Christmas is the debut novel from author Helen Hawkins and a cosy
Christmas contemporary romance set in the fictional Cotswold market town of
Cranswell. It’s an easy read which you could fly through in a day and great if
you like books with a cosy community theme.
I want to preface
this review by saying that I did want to like this book. I always try to
support new authors and hate having to give negative feedback on a debut book where
possible. But, although it did have some strengths, I largely didn’t get on
with A
Concert For Christmas and hope that this review explains my reasoning for this
well.
To start with the things
I enjoyed about the book, I did really like the cosy small-town setting of Cranswell
and it was nice to meet the different inhabitants of the town. A particular shoutout
goes to my personal favourite character: the eccentric Lulu. The focus on the choir
and their Christmas concert felt lovely and festive so it was a great setup for
a cosy Christmas novel.
Sophie was a nice-enough
protagonist. She made me laugh at times and it was sweet how much she cared
about everyone around her. I liked following her day-to-day life as a primary
school teacher and thought this was a nice touch as primary schools can be
lovely – yet busy – places to work over Christmas. The trauma she has following
her miscarriage and subsequent relationship breakdown was largely well written
also. However, I was absolutely infuriated by her for dating the parent of a
child in her class. I am an ex-teacher and that is a total no-no, particularly
in the way Sophie went about it. She was over-familiar with Liam’s daughter Cassie
and it just all completely went against teacher professionalism. I also didn’t
like the relationship between Sophie and her mum. I appreciate that difficult
parent/child relationships do exist but this felt too much and it seemed
unrealistic that Sophie’s mum would run a charity supporting those who have experienced
child loss yet be completely oblivious to how Sophie was struggling.
The primary issue with
the book is Liam’s character. He treats Sophie really poorly and is blowing hot
and cold throughout the whole story so it really hard to root for their romance.
All I wanted was for Sophie to run for the hills. I appreciate that something
could be said for Liam’s untreated trauma following the death of his wife but
if anything, he needed therapy not a new girlfriend to take on the brunt of his
trauma responses. It was extremely difficult to celebrate a HEA between them
when we’d seen awful anger issues in Liam that had not been addressed.
Unfortunately, I did
find the narrative structure difficult to engage with also. We had frequent
chapter breaks in the middle of scenes and chapters repeatedly switched focus
between our two POVs – Sophie’s and Liam’s – and this overall just made the
narrative feel really disjointed and difficult to follow.
Overall, this book
would be good for anyone wanting a easy-read Christmas book with a small-town
setting and community feel, but it just wasn’t for me.
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