The Blurb
The annual Wheaton gingerbread exhibit (a model village made of gingerbread) and grotto has been an important part of the sleepy Cotswold hamlet’s Christmas celebrations for decades, drawing visitors from across the region. Every year the model town grew more elaborate and ambitious but recently, interest has been dwindling. The gingerbread grotto needs to be rehomed or close forever.
Sixty-four-year-old Margi, the event’s founder, has had enough of village life (and its total lack of eligible men) and is planning to sell up and head to Birmingham to live closer to her niece.
She has lost her spark and her Christmas spirit and decides this will be her last gingerbread village, but despairs when she finds her only support is her old friend, Izzy, her niece Lucy from Birmingham, and Fern, the shy young farmer’s daughter. Oh, and Patrick, the gorgeous, reliable school caretaker.
As if this wasn’t enough, Lucy is determined to get her out dating again and persuades her to try some online dating apps but Margi’s had her heart broken too many times and wonders if she has just missed her chance.
Can they save the Gingerbread Grotto and can Margi get her old spark and her Christmas spirit back?
My review
5/5
Who doesn’t love a miniature town? And one made in gingerbread, even better! My sister used to make a model in gingerbread for my late father each year and one year she made a model of Burscough, the village where we grew up, so the memory of that added to my enjoyment of this lovely book.
It has everything you want from a Christmas novel: cosiness, delightful characters, sparkly lights and of course, romance. I was rooting for Margi and Patrick. I also loved the fact that the main character of this book was older, a bit nearer my own age than the protagonists of many of the books I read (I’m in my mid-fifties), but there are many younger characters in the book too.
This is the second book by Kiley Dunbar that I’ve read this summer. The first was The Borrow A Bookshop Holiday which I’d also highly recommend.
To buy a copy of this book, please click here.
About the Author
Kiley Dunbar is a Scot living over the border in Northern England where she teaches English and creative writing, devours romance novels, fusses over Amos the Bedlington Terrier, and loves two little Dunbars. She thinks making imaginary people find happiness and fall in hopelessly in love has to be the best job in the world.
To find out more, visit http://www.kileydunbar.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kileydunbar
