Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I talked about books 3 through 6 of the Maisie Dobbs series. Tina reviewed Outlander Kitchen and A Yorkshire Christmas (thanks for that last suggestion!). Sim's virtual trip in London took us clear back to Roman times when the city was called Londinium. Sim also announced a new movie adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel My Cousin Rachel. Becky reviewed the tenth book in the William Monk series by Anne Perry.
Books: A Yorkshire Christmas by Kate Hewitt
Genre: romance
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Publication date: 2015
Source: purchased as e-book
Summary: A Yorkshire Christmas is set in the fictional village of Ledstow, although the real city of York is occasionally mentioned. Claire planned a quiet Christmas alone in her godmother's Yorkshire cottage. Before she even reaches the place, she plows her rental car into a snowbank and encounters a shepherd attempting to rescue a trapped ewe. They exchange favors and one thing leads to another. Maybe Claire doesn't want such a quiet Christmas after all.
Thoughts: I wanted to learn more about Christmas in modern-day Yorkshire and was thrilled to discover that there's a website for that: Festive Yorkshire.
Here are some of our Christmas Eve options for a fantasy day in Yorkshire:
Sheffield Christmas Market. Sheffield lines its streets with wood stalls housing holiday vendors of artisan gifts and international foods.
Santa Steam Specials. We'll pretend that we already have tickets for the fully-booked steam train on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. Santa will pay a visit during our hour-long journey in a specially decorated coach while we enjoy mincemeat pie and hot ale.
Pantomime. You know from last December that I love a good panto, even though I have yet to see one. There are several to choose from in Yorkshire. I think I'll go with Sleeping Beauty: the Rock 'n' Roll Panto at City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds.
Appeal: Kate Hewitt clearly loves Christmas. My e-book copy of A Yorkshire Christmas came with another Christmas story in the back, Falling for Christmas. She has a 2016 book out called A Cotswold Christmas. Since her stories are short and fun, I may get to that one this week, too. This is light reading, even for me, but it worked well last weekend when I was trapped in the house due to a cruel mix of very cold temperatures and just enough precipitation to make everything icy.
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
