Christmas at the Farmhouse by Rebecca Boxall Review

 

Christmas at the Farmhouse

by Rebecca Boxall

Release Date: October 24th, 2020

Wild Fox Press

Source: ARC provided by the publisher

Tour host: Rachel's Random Resources

As the anticipation of Christmas builds in the Nielsen family’s cosy farmhouse, Jo, Magnus, and their grown-up children begin to congregate for a hybrid Danish-Jersey festive season, each with a surprise of their own – though the surprise that arrives over Christmas is the most life-changing of all.

Fifty years earlier, in 1969, Susan Jones finds herself being pursued by Mr. Jenners, her former English teacher, and at the age of seventeen is packed off to a Home for Unmarried Mothers in London by her uncompromising father. As Christmas approaches, all she can do is desperately hope to be rescued, but will anyone be able to reach her in time?

The two timelines of this festive story gradually weave together in a tale that examines whether love and hope can eventually triumph over even the deepest sadness.

*ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest and unbiased review*

Christmas at the Farmhouse is an absolutely stunning tale that is really several stories in one, we flit between two time periods, which normally I dislike, but in this book the author is done an absolute amazing job of combining them all together, so it flows seamlessly.

The first part of the story is set in Sussex in 1968/9, where Susan is forced into sacrificing everything in the name of her family's reputation, leaving Susan to lose everything she loved. The second part of the story is set in 2019 in Jersey (The Channel Islands), and we meet Jo, Magnus, and their family, who is facing Christmas treading on eggshells around grown-up children, whose lives are changing and don't always get along while trying to keeping Christmas for the grandchildren. But there is are surprises coming that tie these two times together, and truly bring a special kind of harmony for Christmas at the Farmhouse.

I can only say that Christmas at the Farmhouse is a truly stunning book, and a must read for every Christmas! Which is why I give it 5 stars.

Rebecca Boxall was born in 1977 in East Sussex, where she grew up in a vicarage always filled with family, friends, and parishioners. She now lives by the sea in Jersey with her husband, three children, and Rodney the cat.

She read English at the University of Warwick before training as a lawyer and also studied Creative Writing with The Writer’s Bureau. She is the bestselling author of Christmas at the Vicarage, Home for Winter, Christmas on the Coast, The Christmas Forest, and Christmas by the Lighthouse and was nominated for the Romantic Novelist Association Awards in 2020.