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Festive Read - Kiss Me Under The Mistletoe by Fiona Harper

Last Christmas I wanted a festive book to read to add to and enhance my Christmas Holiday.  So while shopping on Amazon.co.uk I picked up 'The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams' by Fiona Harper, I'd never read of of her books before but this sounded like it could fit the bill.

It did and I loved it, so when it came to this festive season I decided to start reading Christmas themed books earlier.  I picked a selection however, the first three I red in the run up to the start of my Christmas break didn't cut the mustard, they just weren't what I was looking for.  So on Christmas Eve I picked up 'Kiss Me Under The Mistletoe';
Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe
Fiona Harper 

This book surprised me, it was a lot deeper than I expected.  The lead character Louise is described as a WAG, she's a model who married a Hollywood star and lives what from the outside looks like a dream life but of course it's far from it.

She decides to leave her husband and the life that she no longer finds fulfilling, if she ever thought that at all and moves to Whitehaven, a large house on the top of the hill which reminded me of the house in the Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie.

Here she meets local landscape designer Ben and although they get off to a rocky start they develop a friendship and then more as the book progresses.

I thin what surprised me the most was the way in which Fiona Harper writes about Louise's back story, her life as a child carer.  This is something I found a great affinity with having been a carer myself.  I identified with a lot of the pain, grief and guilt that comes with taking on that role no matter what age you are.

I found myself liking Louise and I was intrigued by the story of Laura Hastings whom Louise has bought the house from following her death.  In Laura's diaries Louise finds comfort likening her life to that of the hollywood star but I always found she was more like Dominic, the love Laura wrote about longingly.

This book was exactly what I was looking for in a Christmas read, I was eager to turn every page and felt happy and content when I turned the last page.



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