Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Snow is falling, fires are crackling merrily, and Lockton tradition has everyone hanging a promise they’re determined to keep this Christmas on the tree in the village square…
Meg Scott has promised to make a success of her first solo Christmas. She runs a year-round Christmas shop in the little Scottish village, and is a fan of all things mulled, sparkly and festive. So when her warring family shows up on her doorstep, ready to spread discord and tension, Meg is determined not to let them ruin her favourite time of the year.
Meanwhile, Christmas-hating Tom Riley-Clark has been called to the Highlands to help his old friend at The Apple Cross Inn. He’s ready to work hard and has no time for mince pies, tinsel or hanging a promise on the tree: the thought of every day being Christmas is his worst nightmare, and you wouldn’t catch him dead buying a bauble. So everyone is surprised when Christmas-loving Meg and grinch Tom start to get cozy under the mistletoe.
But Tom has a big secret about his past, and in a small town like Lockton it’s hard to keep anything hidden for long. Will everything fall apart when Meg discovers who he really is? The pair are about to learn the hard way that some promises are impossible to keep…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of If Every Day was Christmas to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Finally along comes a book that doesn’t pretend to be all Christmas themed and then has the briefest mention of the festive season leaving the reader disappointed and wanting more. This is so not the case with the fabulous new book from Donna Ashcroft, If Every Day was Christmas, this book just screams Christmas the whole way through. You only need to look at the cover which shows Meg’s Christmas shop and that will get you in the festive mood. Then when you delve into the story it’s non-stop holiday mode from beginning to end and I loved every minute of it.
Donna Ashcroft strikes the perfect balance between humour and the more serious issues being explored in the story and the writing and descriptions of Lockton in the run up to the most wonderful time of the year are just brilliant. I could easily picture myself there in the village with the snow on the ground eager to visit Meg’s all year round Christmas shop to buy some of the quirky decorations she is obsessed with. Well let’s face it Meg is engrossed with Christmas 365 days a year and there’s nothing wrong with that at all especially with the year we are after having. So whether you read this book in December or at the height of the summer it really doesn’t matter because it will be sure to bring a smile to your face.
The setting of Lockton in the Scottish Highlands is the same as Donna’s previous book, The Little Village of New Starts, which I absolutely loved and I had been hoping we would get to learn about Meg in future books and thankfully she was the sole focus of this new story. Her best friend Evie, whose story we followed previously, is away until the very end of this book and yes I did miss her but what was going on with Meg more than made up for her absence. Not to mention the cast of quirky characters I had already encountered in the first book all make a reappearance here along with a few new people. Morag from the post office, Fergus and Agnes from Buttermead Farm, Davy from the Apple Cross Inn all came instantly back to my mind as soon as they were mentioned. But there is one in particular, a newcomer to the village who turns Meg’s carefully ordered Christmas world and heart very much upside down.
On the outside Meg is all glitter and sparkles and her outfits are always Christmas themed or if not a Christmas colour or decoration has to feature in some way shape or form. She is bubbly and set up her all year round shop in homage to her most favourite day of the year so she could experience it over and over again. Her shop is her security blanket and it makes her feel safe. The random acts of kindness she performs and the buzz of giving gifts and finding the perfect decorations or a gift for people to give never wears off for her but deep down she is hiding something. She does her utmost best to avoid her family members and contact is strictly limited unless something serious crops up. For someone who loves a time of year that is all about family and being together and spreading kindness, love, warmth and good cheer this seems utterly ridiculous. But there had to be a solid reason behind Meg’s stance when it came to her family. She has made a promise to herself that her first proper Christmas in Lockton will be a happy one and that she will not return home to her family only to experience another row and have the day ruined for her seen as her mother and father can never get on.
Meg was a fabulous character and really you can’t help but fail to like a character whose favourite movie is The Holiday. As soon as this was mentioned I wanted to leave the book down, despite how much I was enjoying it and go and watch said movie. I loved her joyful spirit and that even though her shop might have been a little bit out of the ordinary and you wondered how could she sustain herself all year on something that perhaps has the potential for two months profit. I loved how she never gave up and just wanted to spread as much happiness and positivity as possible. I suppose she did this because she knew past Christmas experiences and the connections she has with her family just weren’t there or fully happy ones. She was channelling the lack of something in her own personal life into the shop and making others happy. I felt sad for her when she said she doesn’t do relationships because there was too much that could potentially go wrong. Has seeing what has happened to her mum and dad made her like this?
Meg has her perfect plan for Christmas in her flat above the shop which not surprisingly is rammed with as many Christmas decorations and lights as she can fit. But all these plans are up scuttled when her sister and mother arrive to stay and subsequently her father follows them. As she has ran away from them the fact they have come to her perhaps that means the time is now that things must come out into the open. What is eventually is revealed was very surprising and I refer back to the more serious issues I mentioned up above.
This is where I think Donna Ashcroft struck the perfect balance between all the fun and frolics surrounding Christmas, I’m thinking the case of the destroyed messages on the Christmas tree and the residents decorations being messed about with - not the conclusion I had anticipated with regard to this that’s for sure, and the deeper hidden messages behind it. That Christmas is not always perfect for everyone and there is so much pressure on people to buy and do the right thing, that for those whom this time of year brings heartbreak and lots of memories they or their reasons cannot be forgotten.
Meg has her family to deal with and the shop and she has always had the best of intentions to help people. But when newcomer Tom Riley Clark arrives in the village to help Davey run the pub over the festive season, well he sets the cat amongst the pigeons. Isn’t she meant to be closed off to love and fearful in engaging in a relationship? Yet there is something about him that she just can’t pull away from even if they are the polar opposite of each other. Tom for example hates Christmas with a passion, I don’t think he was best pleased when Meg more or less vomited Christmas all over his cottage, but I think he probably had good reason to and I knew if I was patient enough the answer would be revealed to me in time. There were plenty of little clues regarding Tom dropped in but I was enjoying reading the story and the antics of the residents far too much to want to rush ahead and try and slot these pieces together. The wait for the reveal and the ultimate conclusion was more than worth it though.
Tom and his basset hound Cooper are only really in the village as a helping hand to Davey. He doesn’t plan on getting involved with the day to day lives of anybody there nor does he want to help out with the Christmas concert being organised to raise funds for the restoration of the village hall. Tom has lots of feelings of emptiness that he can’t shake and he never makes promises to anyone because he knows he won’t keep them. He never seemed to let his guard down and was in a permanent state of misery more or less. He seemed angry at the world and clearly couldn’t move on from what had deeply affected him in the past. What could have happened to make him detest Christmas so much? He is all about retreat and stays away from relationships as he is not in the market for one. But when he first meets Meg when he is stranded in the hills above the village, well she does something to him and if she keeps going the way she does maybe his barriers might began to fall down? Or would it be that simple? After all can he continue to shut everyone and everything out especially the thing that was once very much his passion and his livelihood?
If Every Day was Christmas was a brilliant read and I really hope that this is not the last we have heard from the residents of Lockton. Please Donna Ashcroft keep writing about this special village and all who live there. There was so much going on in this wonderful story that I never noticed the pages flying by. The will they, won’t they of Meg and Tom and getting to the root of their issues? The question of whether Meg’s family will resolve all their long harboured secrets and just the wonderful images of a village cut off by snow and all coming together to make Christmas even more special, well it was just all brilliant and such a pleasure to read and I know many other readers will feel exactly the same way.
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