The Christmas Sisters

Sarah Morgan is one of my favourite authors and she has moved from the lighter chick-lit to more contemporary women's fiction in her last two books, with much more depth to the stories, and in my opinion is just going from strength to strength as this was another wonderful book about family dynamics. The three sisters are Hannah, Beth and Posy. Hannah is a high-flyer living in Manhattan, very clever, very controlled and seems quite cold, never letting emotions rule her. Beth is a stay at home mum to two young children, also living in Manhattan, who is feeling a bit overwhelmed with motherhood being her whole life. Posy is a mountain guide and lives near her parents in Scotland. All sisters end up in Scotland for Christmas with their parents, Suzanne and Stewart, who are actually their adoptive parents as the sisters parents died in an avalanche when they were young and as Suzanne & Stewart were friends of their parents they took in the girls to raise as their own, moving them from the US to Scotland to be nearer Stewart's family. There are various dramas going on with the sisters, all initially stemming from losing their parents at such a young age, and they all grew up with various hang-ups, well apart from Posy really, she seemed the most grounded of the lot of them and probably my favourite. But this Christmas things came to a head in a variety of ways and the sisters actually start talking properly to one another again about more emotional subjects that they'd been avoiding for years. Suzanne and Stewart were great parents too, such a stabilising influence, always there when needed. This was a really engrossing story set around Christmas in the Scottish Highlands. So whilst not a fluffy Christmas story there was plenty of snow and Christmas-feeling throughout, with deeper feelings finally getting sorted out for everyone - with a lovely ending - I do love a happy ending! Loved it!

The title really sums the book up - it's about 3 sisters and how they spend one Christmas. One Christmas coming to terms with a tragic accident 25 years ago and trying to regain their closeness as a family unit. Unfortunately, the characters of the sisters are, how to put this tactfully, rather stereotypical. We have Beth who is the stay at home mum to 2 daughters who is desperate to reclaim an adult life for herself outside the home; Hannah who is the career woman and pushes everyone away from her and Posy who is the tomboy following in her parents footsteps who wants to leave home for adventure but is afraid of upsetting the family. To be perfectly honest I never really felt any connection to the characters on the page at all. Even Suzannah, the family matriarch, is fairly flat as a person - her whole reason for living seems to be to provide for her girls and little is made of her entrepeneurship. The story itself is quite good - the tension between the various family members is well described and the mystery of the avalanche is drawn out over most of the book with the reader only finding out the real circumstances behind it roughly 3/4 of the way through. By that point though I was reading to finish rather than reading to find out what happened. Even worse Patrick is regularly mentioned and described as the rock of the family but he hardly makes an appearance in the book at all as an actual person - we hear far more from the lodger Luke, Beth's husband and Hannah's boyfriend than we do from him. I also struggled with how saintly Suzannah and Patrick were portrayed in the book, it really was cloying in places. The village set scenes were probably the best thing about the book. The claustrophobia of small communities was apparent throughout and yet it is a strangely welcome claustrophobia where everyone is supportive whilst sticking their noses in. Not too sure about the Craft Cafe though, it did have more than a touch of my bete noir in novels the strangely overly successful small business in an unlikely location. I'm not sure why I struggled to connect with this book so much - maybe it is because I am an Only Child so the family dynamics exposed here are beyond my ken. The writing itself is accomplished and I can understand the attraction for readers in the author's books, it just didn't do "it" for me. So much so I did wonder if I was reading the same book that others have reviewed so glowingly.

I love a good Christmas read; especially those that leave me with that warm and cosy feeling and The Christmas Sisters ticks all the boxes! Suzanne McBride and her husband Stuart live in Scotland with their youngest daughter, Posy, nearby. Posy's two sisters, however, live in the US and each year Suzanne goes all out to create the perfect Christmas, hoping the whole family will head home and finally all the underlying currents will disappear and they will enjoy the family festivities as one. With everyone following their own path, is that even possible? This one has a bit of everything .. love, history, family pressures, danger, excitement and - as with every great Christmas tale - snow! A packed story from beginning to end, with lots of revelations and typical family feelings coming to the fore which all adds up to a wonderful winter read which has left me full of festive spirit and really looking forward to the Christmas season. One to add to your December reading list without a doubt! My thanks to publisher Harper Collins for my copy via NetGalley. This is my honest, original and unbiased review.