The Twelve Dates of Christmas: The Delightfully Cosy and Heartwarming Bestselling Winter Romance

If you love those Hallmark christmas movies full of quirky characters, things go wrong, but true love is in plain sight all along and everyone lives happily ever after, then this book is definitely the book for you. Poor Kate Turner, terribly unlucky in love, is "encouraged" to sign up for a 12 Dates of Christmas event. A new event happening for the first time, that is not without its hiccups. There are lots of mishaps, some nice guys and some real dirtbags that I was thrilled Kate didn't end up with. I got this one for free, and read it over about three days (first time in a long time it's taken me less than a month to read a book, I might add.) I couldn't put it down. I would have loved to see more of the characters of Blexford, as we hear so much about them from Kate, but can't complain. What I did get to see kept me reading, and makes me want to get myself a late Christmas present of a hard copy of the book.

I really enjoyed this lovely Christmas-themed story set in the little English village of Blexford. Kate is a fabric designer for Liberty who moved back to Blexford from London to be nearer her Dad after her (dippy!) Mum ran off with someone else. She has settled back into her old life and reconnected with her childhood friends, Laura and her young family, and Matt, who owns and runs the Pear Tree Cafe in the village. Kate and Matt's relationship has been a bit rocky over the years but they are back to their usual friendly bickering now. Laura works at Blexford Manor and there is an event being organised by a dating app site, whereby people who sign up meet up with 12 people for various dates in the run up to Christmas. Kate isn't interested but is persuaded into it by Laura and so decides she has nothing to lose. The dates are all very varied and Kate manages to get a lot of 'interesting' characters, which makes for a very funny story at times. It was very clever as it made the book really interesting and easy reading as each date was different chapter. During the course of the story we get to know Laura and Matt more, both really great characters, although Matt was a bit of an idiot towards the end. A really lovely warm feeling story with lots of snow and Christmas atmosphere, I loved it!