I am always in two minds about sequels for novels (and honestly, all sorts of storytelling but given this is a book review, let’s stick with books for now).
When I love a story and the characters in it, and that’s happens a lot given the ridiculously empathetic soul that I am, I want to know what happens next, who goes where, who does what and if all the happy-ever-after, in romcoms especially, can find itself repeated for someone else.
But when I’ve read what feels like a perfect book, I am also a little afraid that all that flawless sense of place and time and people can’t possibly be as good the second time around.
And yet, and yet, I plunge in anyway more times than I don’t; thankfully when it comes to the beautifully told books of Cressida McLaughlin, all that impetuosity to see what happens next, is always amply rewarded.
That’s very much the case with The Secret Mistletoe Promise which is the follow-up the sublimely delightful The Secret Christmas Bookshop and which more than delivers on the implicit promise in any sequel, not always delivered alas, to take what you loved in the first outing, build on it and make you love the people and place even more.
We are back in the gorgeous North Norfolk village of Mistingham with the protagonist of the previous novel, Sophie, who runs a beautifully stationary emporium, her previously grumpy now happy fiancé, Harry, his bestie May, Fiona, Jazz and a cast of others, all of whom we have come to know and love from the arrestingly lovely first book.
Dexter had been through so much, horror and grief that she couldn’t even imagine, and he still wanted to make sure she was all right. She swallowed down a lump of emotion, glad she had him beside her for the walk back to Birdie’s house.
It is an unalloyed joy to be back with them, and while they aren’t the stars of the show this time around, they are still integral to the story and very much a key part of what happens to the protagonist of The Secret Mistletoe Promise who is very much in need of a Mistingham miracle.
Imogen, acting on much-suppressed impulse, has left her stuffy husband-to-be Edmund at the altar, and leaving a ton of suffocating expectations behind in London, not least those of her upper class parents, has fled, in her wedding dress no less, to what she hopes will be the comforting surrounds of the small North Norfolk village where her gleefully unconventional but sweetly loving Birdie lives.
She hasn’t seen Birdie in years, not since a lot of fondly remembered visits when she was younger, the result of an estrangement between Birdie and Imogen’s mother who is the absolute straight-laced, judgement yin to her mother’s potion-mixing, devil-may-care yang.
Imogen arrives with no plan, no winter clothes, which is a problem given winter is fast approaching as is the most wonderful time of the year, and a gnawing chasm-like sense that she has absolutely and completely wrecked her well-structured, well planned and deeply complaint life.
She has always followed the rules until she catastrophically did not, and riven with guilt and sense of purposelessness, she hides out at Birdie’s hoping to find solace and sanctaury.
(courtesy official Cresside McLaughlin TikTok account)
Which of course she does because Birdie is one of those souls who bucks any and all convention and yet who loves with the power of a thousand nurturing suns.
She is exactly who Imogen needs to be with and while she feels adrift and quite lost after leaving her entire well-appointed future behind in a church containing a man she doesn’t love, parents who see her as less a daughter than a social hierarchy bolstering chess piece and a life that is far too conventional for a soul too much like her grandmother’s, she soon finds a real home in Mistingham.
Much of that has to do with the fact that she meets local superstar baker Dexter and his ten-year-old wise and fun beyond her years daughter, Lucy, who give her a lift to Birdie’s when she first arrives in town; it’s hard not to bond with someone who arrives in a voluminous wedding dress and she and Dexter and Lucy are practically family by the time she is dropped at Birdie’s door.
You know precisely and exactly where The Secret Mistletoe Promise is going at this point but the beauty of McLaughlin’s writing is that she takes all of those expected pieces and does something quite affectingly real and honest and lovely with them.
It’s hard to make well-worn tropes and clichés sing but McLaughlin and even as Imogen wins over the heart of everyone, changes lives and becomes an indispensable part of storytime with Jazz and the Christmas fest, it all feels like a brand-new warm hug you didn’t know you needed.
Thick, fat snowflakes were drifting in a leisurely dance towards the ground, the pavement was turning white, and she [Imogen] was hit with the crisp, cold scent of snow. Without even stopping to put on her coat, Imogen stepped into the winter wonderland.
Or maybe you did know and that’s why you picked up The Secret Mistletoe Promise.
Regardless of expectations, and they are a dirty word of sorts for a highly conflicted Imogen who knows she has done the right thing but hates how she did it, The Secret Mistletoe Promise is the sort of book which will absolutely win you over as you dropped not only into the new part of Imogen’s life but all the magic and wonder and feel-good loveliness of an English romcom Christmas.
Christmas is everywhere, from a giant ice rink on the village green, courtesy of the local lord of the manor Harry who was Scrooged from angry to loved-up by Sophie a year later, to the Christmas event, the Snow Show to all the lights and colours and decorations, The Secret Mistletoe Promise is a love letter to the love, hope and possibility of the festive season.
But more than that, it is a celebration of what happens when you throw away suffocatingly not-right-for-you expectations and own what you want and who you are, even if you’re not sure what they are at first – that’s why you need Birdie and a found family village of beautifully enfolding and caringly supportive souls – and find a home and love at a place that was simply meant to be a temporary refuge but which becomes a home, not only for Christmas, which is wonderful, but well beyond and happy-ever-after too.