Christmas Every Day - Beth Moran

[goodreads]

Title: Christmas Every Day
Author: Beth Moran
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~10hrs
Date read: August, 2023

When Jenny inherits her estranged grandmother’s cottage in Sherwood Forest, she has nothing to lose - no money, no job, no friends, no family to speak of, and zero self-respect. Things can only get better...

Her grumpy, but decidedly handsome new neighbour, Mack, has a habit of bestowing unsolicited good deeds on her. And when Jenny is welcomed into a rather unusual book club, life seems to finally be getting more interesting.

Instead of reading, the members pledge to complete individual challenges before Christmas: from finding new love, learning to bake, to completing a daredevil bucket list. Jenny can’t resist joining in, and soon a year of friendship and laughter, tears and regrets unfolds in the most unexpected ways.


Really, really cute book. And despite the title, not at all Christmassy, so it didn't matter that I read it in July/August :-)

Getting my few complaints out of the way first...
Incredibly predictable, of course, but that kinda comes with the genre, so didn't bother me at all. I wasn't completely thrilled with the foreshadowing, but it was typically revealed within a few pages of the foreshadowing occurring, so didn't bother me as much as it normally would. Also, Jenny made a few bad choices that could REALLY have come back to bite her, but fortunately that didn't happen - although I will say that was more down to sheer dumb luck rather than anything else.

Apart from that, I loved it. I loved the small-town community, I loved the book club, and I loved how Jenny found her feet after having lived under her sister's thumb for far too long. I loved reading about the house renovations and would have been very keen to give her a hand - I love rummaging through old stuff and separating the junk from the treasures :-D

Definitely a feel-good comfort read that I may eventually need to get for my physical library as well.