(WYNTHORPE HALL, BOOKS 5 & 6): SLEIGH RIDES AND SILVER BELLS AT THE CHRISTMAS FAIR & SNOWFLAKES AND CINNAMON SWIRLS AT THE CHRISTMAS WINTER WONDERLAND

 A bit like many of you, I'm finding myself low on motivation (that recent blood tests revealed I'm anaemic and low in various vitamins certainly doesn't help) and as such I'm rather embarrassed that I'm only now getting around to sharing my thoughts on my last three reads of2020 with these two books by HEIDI SWAIN today and, fingers crossed, Trisha Ashley's A Christmas Cracker sometime next week.

SLEIGH RIDES AND SILVER BELLS AT THE CHRISTMAS FAIR (Synopsis can be read by clicking on the book title).

MY THOUGHTS ... Put in mind of the German Christmas markets I so enjoy, I loved the setting of Sleigh Rides and Silver Bells at the Christmas Fair, that Christmas featured in it more than I've come to expect from such books ... what can I say?

Given that one of my biggest complaints about books written for the Christmas market is that they aren't exactly Christmassy, that this featured so much of the festivities I associate with the holiday came as a welcome surprise.

A bit twee I give you but then my reading twee 'Christmas' novels is something I associate with this time of year. The romance that of the warm, fuzzy feeling you get in your stomach (and, no, I don't mean indigestion after having eaten one too many mince pies); the tender kisses type rather than anything explicit. That I didn't find myself warming to the characters (especially not the main female character, Anna) and I certainly wasn't feeling the chemistry between that of her and her love interest, Jamie, hey-ho, a charming little read of the type of Christmases many of us dream of, this alone was enough to compensate.

SNOWFLAKES AND CINNAMON SWIRLS AT THE CHRISTMAS WINTER WONDERLAND (Synopsis can be read by clicking on the book title).

MY THOUGHTS ... Book 6 in the author's Wynbridge/Wynthorpe Hall series, Snowflakes and Cinnamon Swirls at The Winter Wonderland focuses not on Anna as in Sleigh Rides and Silver Bells at the Christmas Fair (book 5 in the series) but rather on housekeeper, Hayley.

A much changed character; gone is the feisty Hayley of the previous book, in her place there's a much gentler, softer Hayley ... a Hayley that is perhaps too much changed to be realistic? But then ...

None of the characters in this book (or, come to think of it, the previous one) are given a big enough platform to truly bring them to life for me. Something that could have been rectified if I'd read the series from the beginning? Perhaps. But I'm beginning to think character development is very much a secondary consideration; that certainly with the Christmas books its all about getting the reader to invest not in the characters but rather the romance of a cosy, English Christmas spent in your archetypical charming English country hall/village.