Together by Christmas: Escape into the Sunday Times Bestseller

I don't know what it is about a Karen Swan book, but I find them so compelling. I often start off not even liking a character, usually one of the main characters, but her books are just that bit different and the sort of book you can't stop reading to find out what happens. Lee is a famous photographer, who used to be war correspondent and has won a Pulitzer Prize for her work, but is now living in Amsterdam with her young son and is a highly sought after celebrity photographer. She has seen awful atrocities in her past work and even now has nightmares about it all and finds it very difficult to put behind her, which makes her quite closed off and a very hard sort of personality with everyone, apart from her very close circle of friends and her son. Her 'partner in crime' as a war correspondent was Harry, who was the journalist to Lee's photography, and they are both now living in Amsterdam, Lee with her son and Harry with his pregnant wife, but Lee won't have anything at all to do with him, and the reason is revealed later as the story develops. The story is mainly set in the present day, but does flip back to the past in parts, to explain what happened. We also have the very interesting 'elfstedentocht' ice skating competition, which I had never heard of, but only happens in the Netherlands when the ice is a certain thickness, I always learn about something new with a Karen Swan book! I found Lee very hard to like at first, but she definitely grew on me as the story developed and, because of events and certain people, her personality softened (very) slightly. There is quite a lot going on and Lee's life is certainly never dull, but as usual everything flowed really well and kept you wanting to read just one more page. It's certainly not an easy book to read in parts, and even though it's set around Christmas and does have lots of snow and ice, it could really be read any time of the year. Another book by Karen Swan that I will long remember.