Weekly Reading Round-Up

As the countdown to Christmas continues, I’ve been on a Jenny Colgan Christmas book binge, reading the two sequels to Sweetshop of Dreams: Christmas at Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop and The Christmas Surprise.

Now that I’m approaching the end of the last one, I feel quite at a loss for what to read next. I have a few Very Dark and Serious Books I’ve been meaning to read, but that might be too much shock to the system– rather like going from being bundled up with hot cocoa to jumping into an icy river.

So… does anyone have any recommendations for good Christmas-themed British chick lit? (Or mystery. I could move sideways to cozy mystery, as long as there’s a village involved. Preferably with thatch.)

What have you been reading this week?

13 Comments

  1. Jean on December 22, 2017 at 1:30 pm

    I hope you get some recommendations. I’m still getting over finishing the Merry Folger novels! Currently reading Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton, which doesn’t fit the bill for your cozy with a thatched cottage.

  2. Freya on December 22, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    Have you already read Sarah Caudwell’s mysteries a million times? The last one has some Christmassy bits. I love them all so intensely that I’ve now memorized them & can’t really read them anymore. 🙁 I just started Jessica Mitford’s memoir, *Hons and Rebels*, which is absorbing but not at all seasonal.

  3. LynnS on December 22, 2017 at 3:43 pm

    I’m doing a reread of The Scottish Prisoner and I have Another Backwards Christmas on my Kindle.

  4. Rachel Adrianna on December 22, 2017 at 5:40 pm

    I just discovered a stack of wintry British reads myself 🙂

    A Fatal Winter, by G.M. Malliet [2nd in a series]
    12 Days at Bleakly Manor, by Michelle Griep [1st ina series]
    Twelve Drummers Drumming, by CC Benison [1st in a series]
    Seven Days of Us, by Francesca Hornak [standalone]

    • Rachel Adrianna on December 22, 2017 at 6:08 pm

      [whoops… the Benison novel is 3rd in the series!]

  5. Maria on December 22, 2017 at 8:20 pm

    I’m a huge fan of Jenny Colgan- I recently finished Christmas at the beach st bakery- it was the third in the series- it was a great holiday book. I am starting Mr Dickens and his Carol by Samantha Silva-it looks good and you can’t get any more British than Dickens.

  6. Maria on December 22, 2017 at 8:31 pm

    Forgot one- Christmas at Tiffanys by Karen Swan- loved this book

  7. Alice on December 22, 2017 at 9:03 pm

    House of Silence by Linda Gillard definitely fits your bill! The title makes it sound quite ominous when it is anything but. Set during the Christmas holidays in a quaint village. There is a mystery, a giant old mansion and extended family members.

  8. Carla on December 22, 2017 at 11:17 pm

    Started and finished the story of Arthur Truluv, super sweet book!

  9. Chelsea F on December 23, 2017 at 12:01 pm

    I always read Rhys Bowen’s “The Twelve Clues of Christmas”. Set in 1920s Great Britain, complete with thatched roofed village, caroling, wassail, and twelve murders all tied to a verse in “the Twelve Days of Christmas”. Utterly delicious!!!!

  10. Carey Tynan on December 24, 2017 at 8:22 am

    T. E. Kinsey’s Christmas at the Grange (novella).
    Old standbys- Hercule Poirot’s Christmas & The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
    And, of course, Donna Andrews Christmas mysteries: Six Geese a-Slaying, Duck the Halls, The Nightengale before Christmas, and the newest one, How the Finch Stole Christmas.

  11. Betty Strohecker on December 24, 2017 at 11:17 am

    I’m about to finish A Christmas to Remember, a collection of four regency or Victorian era novellas by fabulous romance authors – Lisa Kleypas, Lorraine Heath, Megan Frampton, and Vivienne Lorret. Frampton is hilarious.

  12. Anne R on December 27, 2017 at 3:19 pm

    I’m rereading The Canterbury Papers by Judith Healy. Princess Alais of France was sent home years ago after Richard the Lionheart ended their engagement and now Dowager Queen Eleanor begs a big favor from her and she’ll get a big favor in return. When Alais arrives in Canterbury things go awry and she’ll need help from a man from her past to if she wants to complete Eleanor’s task. So good!

    I also read Joanna Shupe’s Christmas novella – Miracle on Ladies’s Mile. I love her Gilded Age NY romances.

    And I read Seven Days of Us about a British family quarantined together over the holidays.

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