(courtesy Hachette Australia)
Jenny Colgan’s books always feel like you’re falling into the embrace of an old and trusted friend, whose very presence makes all the terrors and troubles of the world dim, and then go away.
That’s especially so when you return to one of the many series she has in play, in this case, the Mure series set on the fictional remote northern Scottish island of the same name, where characters we know and love such as brother and sister Flora and Fintan Mackenzie, and their extended brood of family and friends enjoy a mostly idyllic life far from the madding crowd.
The genius of books like An Island Christmas, the third in the series, and now Christmas at the Island Hotel is that while life often feels picture postcard perfect, with more than a hint of fairytale loveliness to it, no one on Mure is immune to the trials and tribulations of life.
Fintan ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- has lost his beloved American husband, Coltan, to the scourge of cancer and, quite understandably, a year on, isn’t mired in a grief that will not let him go.
While he is busy bringing Coltan’s pet project, the opening of a five-star hotel known as The Rock in a grand old home on the island to fruition, something he must see through to honour his husband’s treasured memory, he is patently miserable, something obvious to everyone but most especially his sister Flora.
‘I hate this job,’ said Fintan despondently.
‘Me also’ said Gaspard, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it — somewhat miraculously — in the full force of the oncoming wind.
Opening anything on the scale of a hotel is a massive undertaking, and while Flora and Fintan appreciate that, even they are shaken by how much effort it’s going to require.
Flora has some experience in the hospitality industry, running a bakery and cafe known as The Seaside Kitchen, and she takes to getting the hotel up and running like a duck to water, even though she is technically on maternity leave and should be happy to kick back with her baby and adorable husband Joel.
But Fintan is a man more accustomed to making artisanal cheeses, locked away in a shed on his family’s cosy dairy farm and indulging in fromage-driven creativity where the only concern is getting recipe and technique right.
As Christmas at the Island Hotel opens, Finta, all bluster and barely disguised fury at his loss, is hiring staff for the hotel, which comes to include a divinely talented but hilariously temperamental chef, Gaspard, and a disgraced Norwegian rich boy, Konstantin, whose father has cut him off and decreed he cannot rejoin the inner circle of his wealthy aristocratic family until he’s learnt the value of working hard.
Not exactly the trouble-free staff Fintan and Flora need, and the first few weeks with them prove to be a challenge indeed, but as is the way with Mure, and the delightfully restorative books of Colgan, time and contact with the people of the island changes even the hardest and weirdest of hearts and before you know, Kontantin and Gaspard are coming alive, and even, maybe finding redemption and romance.
It’s precisely what you want from a Colgan novel, and indeed any festive romance novel, but where Colgan excels is in making her characters feel so real, and their struggles so grounded and relatable, that when the fairytale ending arrives, it feels wonderfully well-earned and far more emotionally impactful than you might expect.
Fintan’s grief, for instance, feels every bit as raw and honest as anyone who has experienced the loss of someone close will know it to be.
Colgan doesn’t pretend for a second that Fintan can just snap out of it, and his mood swings and lack of engagement with preparations to launch The Rock at Christmas, with all the seasonal lights, food and atmosphere you could ask for, feel so true to life that you ache for this poor, lost man.
You also feel a great deal for Konstantin and Gaspard too, who are give the full 3D character treatment and emerge from feeling like narrative props to real people who go on deep arcs that transform not only them but the lives of the people around them.
It’s all happening against a background too which is fraught and difficult with Flora wondering if she’s a good mum, Isla worried she isn’t up to working in a big hotel kitchen after the relative safety of working at The Seaside Kitchen with her bestie, Iona, and a phalanx of personalities, not all of whom fit the idea of Mure as a bucolic idyll free from the tensions of mainland community life.
‘Because you’re not an idiot,’ said Flora. ‘Of course you do. Make the best cheese you can in his memory. That’s what made him fall for you in the first place.’
‘Actually, I think it was my fabulous butt,’ said Fintan.
‘Yeah, yeah, whatevs,’ said Flora. And properly arm in arm this time, both beaming, they made their way back to the house.
The joy of Christmas at the Island Hotel is that we get all the festive healing and redemption we could ask for in a setting we love and with many characters who have come to feel more like family than characters in a novel.
But for all of the love and warmth and gloriously hopeful possibility, and the dreamy wonder of Christmas, Christmas at the Island Hotel knows that life keeps happening, festive season or not, and that there’s a lot to deal with and negotiate even when many of your dreams are coming true.
It’s lovely to think we might have only good and happy things, especially at Christmas where it’s all but expected, and while some festive rom-com novels exist solely in a chestnuts roasting and sleigh ride world where troubles are easily seen off, if they are there at all, deep down we know it’s not realistic for problems to vanish the moment something even remotely festive comes onto the horizon.
Christmas at the Island Hotel embraces that sensibility, acknowledging the sadness and pain of life in all its truthful agony while also offering the very real idea that love can change everything for the better, and if it happens at Christmas, then all the better.
This is yet another Colgan novel to soothe the soul while it embraces the trials and sadnesses of life, and its mix of existential honesty and Christmas wonderment makes it the perfect accompaniment to a season where pain and glittering excitement often sit side by side.