Carry Me Through Christmas by Rachel Holm

Fans of Kimberley Freeman, Lucinda Riley, and Rachel Hore will want to look for it. While imperfect, this debut novel has much to recommend it. The novel also jumped abruptly from one viewpoint to another in the later sections. For example, I puzzled at her habit of wearing jeans and crumpled T-shirts for important meetings. While Alice is a brave, unselfish heroine, at times Kate feels immature in comparison. Each locale is skillfully described, from the rocky Corsican coast, with its heady scent of herbs and salt, to the bohemian 1920s and, later, the terror of wartime France. “How could a mere few strokes of pen do that, exert such a pull of memory and emotion?” Foley’s elegiac tone suits her story about love, loss, and people’s connections to the past. Although separated due to life circumstances, neither forgets the other. They meet again at an English house party in 1928. He and Alice Eversley, born into different social classes, become friends as children, when their families vacation on Cornwall during the lazy summer of 1913. Intervening sections reveal the tale of a long-ago love that transformed Tom’s life. An exquisite decades-old sketch of a beautiful dark-haired woman with a striking resemblance to June leads Kate to renowned artist Thomas Stafford, now an elderly widower living on Corsica. A Christmas Festival, a girl who loves this. Make sure to buy it and read it till the end. After the subsequent death of June’s adoptive mother, Evie, Kate is shaken to learn that Evie had withheld information about June’s birth mother. Its Christmas Eve and were reading this wonderful holiday story. In 1986, Kate Darling is a 27-year-old photographer still mourning her mother, June, a celebrated ballerina the two had been exceptionally close. Spanning most of the 20 th century, The Book of Lost and Found is the sort of sweeping multi-period saga I seek out, one that promises to carry me away on a journey of discovery along with the characters.

Carry Me Through Christmas by Rachel Holm