(courtesy Amazon Australia)
If you’re after a book which is all Christmas all the time, like a blessedly escapist festive romcom, then The Secret Christmas Library is likely not the book for you.
It is not even, as it turns out, about a library that is secret or especially Christmassy; rather this beautifully written story of love and books found, of connection, found and family is more Christmas adjacent, taking place in the days leading up to and on the big day as protagonist Mirren Sutherland – whom we first met in a short published in 2024, The Christmas Book Hunt, reviewed below in a bonus section – seeks to find a long-lost book which could save the estate of an old Scottish Highlands family.
As seasonal letters go, The Secret Christmas Library is a little light on than your average festive read, but having said that, while it really only situates much its mystery solving, falling in love and hope for the future during December, what it does so brilliantly is evoke the hope, possibility and optimism of the most wonderful time of the year when we all happily invest in the idea that this is one month or so on the calendar when the world might tilt towards life in all its love-filled glory.
It also sings the song, much as its novella-length predecessor did, of how restorative and enlivening books and literature can be and how even being near books, lots and lots of books – the old laird or lord of the estate was a compulsive book hoarder but for, it turns out, the very loveliest and romantic of reasons – can be good for the soul.
Mirren flapped her hands. ‘If it was … oh, my God … the north. The North Star! Over the ice! Not land, not sea – ice! Those are Arctic animals!’
‘But we’re already in the north,’ said Theo, puzzled. ‘It’s freezing up here. Have you got any bears?’
But Jamie wasn’t listening.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘ I wonder if … I wonder if he meant the North Library.’
But as The Secret Christmas Library begins, Mirren is feeling none of those things.
Rather she’s smarting from a broken heart, the lingering loss of her beloved Great Aunt Violet and a soul-sapping sense that she’s lost her way in a life that has stalled and is rapidly going nowhere.
Her brief moment of book finding success (again see below) has given way to moments sitting alone in the British Museum where she watches as people stop by the exhibit which showcases the book she found and how it was located, a story in which she played a pivotal role.
Essentially stalking a high point of her recent past provides her with some solace and comfort, and after meeting Jamie McKinnon, the aforementioned laird of the estate, an opportunity to do what she loves more than her job which looks like it’s about to disappear down the gurgler as the company she works for slides into insolvency.
She sets off for the estate after an invitation from Jamie to help her find a lost rare & precious book among the thousands filling almost every room of his sprawling ancestral home, and does so in style, aboard a private carriage on the Caledonian Sleeper train from London, a wondrously unique journey which is only marred by the fact her ex has also been invited along too.
Theo Palliser ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- is the nephew of a nasty rare book dealer whom Mirren meets in the prequel novella and who, appears at first to be made of more integrity and genuinely good humanity than his relative.
But as she and Theo set about solving the mystery of a missing book which, if sold, might solve many of the money worries bedevilling an ancient Scottish estate which has seen far better days, its clifftop, fairytale castle-ish slowing sliding into paint-peeling, roof tile-lifting ruin, it becomes clear that he is not the man for her.
But Jamie, for all his initial gentle mocking and emotional remoteness might be; but for much of the first half of The Secret Christmas Library, it’s the mystery that is the thing, the main narrative game in town which sees Jamie, Mirren, Theo and Jamie’s goth-centric and speaks-her-mind sister Esme racing from one part of the castle and estate to the other, reading old clue-filled letters and trying to solve number puzzles which Jamie’s eccentric and taciturn grandfather loved more than anything.
Well, besides buying excessive numbers of books anyway.
It’s a great and thrilling hunt but there’s still enough downtime for dressing up for dinner, slow and lazy breakfasts that fill the belly and heart-to-heart conversations which bring people closer, or drive them apart, as the case may be.
This is a mystery full of hope and possibility but also disappointment and despair, all of it taking place in a white Christmas in the making, with heavy snowfalls cutting off the estate from the rest of the world.
‘I think we will find it,’ said Mirren, trying to be optimistic. ‘Look out there.’
The first golden beams were bouncing off the ground; the snow had hardened into solid ice, glistening like diamonds, crunchy and solid.
‘The whole world new,’ she said, still quietly, as it trying not to startle a shy creature. ‘That’s the promise of Christmas, isn’t it? Whatever you believe. The whole world turns shiny and new again, a brand new year, a brand new baby. It’s always the same and always new.’
This “bottle episode” approach to the narrative means that the whole world essentially becomes the home and the estate, upping the stakes and making all kinds of discoveries, both of the heart and of literary problem solving, feel all the more impactful.
Colgan does a beautifully arresting job of crafting characters who, while they might appear to be secondary to the action at first, soon become its fuel and its driver, their hopes, dreams and needs pushing them to find out why Jamie and Esme’s grandfather made the discovery of his legacy such a gargantuan and involved job.
And almost an impossible one, with the castle so full of books that finding one special one seems like a mission beyond solving, a task without reward or hope; even so, the group of four, plus housekeeper Bonnie who is Jamie’s close childhood friend, push on, partly because they have no choice but also because with power out and communications down, there’s precious little else to do.
The joy of The Secret Christmas Library is not necessarily any overt Christmasness, though the season does make its presence wonderfully and evocatively felt, but rather the way it encapsulates and celebrates the specialness of a time of year when, despite all the odds, good and wondrously possible things do happen, hearts are healed and stirred merrily into romantic action and books do what they do so well which is reigniting life, firing up the imagination and making a way where there was none before.
BONUS REVIEW: The Christmas Book Hunt
(courtesy Amazon)
This delightful novella, published in 2024 and possibly meant as a standalone story at the time, acts as a prequel to the 2025 novel reviewed above.
The Christmas Book Hunt introduces us to quantity surveyor Mirren Sutherland, a perpetually skint Londoner who has a family she loves and who love her but who test her patience as much as they make her life cosy and wonderful.
The only person in the family she loves unreservedly it seems is her Great Aunt Violet who, in the way of relatives not part of an immediate family and thus able to dispense advice and emotional embrace in a way free from the oppressive familial dynamics neither they nor the person they are closest to are inviolably a part of nor want to be for the matter, is her unconditionally loving anchor point in an uncertain world.
Very sadly, Violet is dying and all she wants before she shuffles off this mortal coil is for Mirren to find a book she loved and treasured as a child; unfortunately for Mirren, but great for the story, this is not just any tome you can order online for immediate next day delivery.
The book in question is A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson but with one-of-a-kind illustrations by Scottish artist Aubrey Beardsley whose work was intended as a printable edition but which never made it past the original artwork prototype.
Its existence is hinted at but deemed as apocryphal by every book dealer Mirren visits across England and Scotland, including Phillip Palliser, a slimy rare books dealer in London who despatches his nephew to stalk Mirren wherever she goes and to get ownership of the book should it turn out it does exist.
And the bookshops! It was almost overwhelming. There was one that had taken over an entire old cinema building. There was an ancient building with genuine half-timbers. There were crime bookshops and naughty bookshops and every type of book under the sun, and, everywhere, people who loved to read …
Naturally being a Colgan novel, where love is near far away, Theo and Mirren connect, begin to fall in love and solve much of the mystery themselves, though the engine of any success is largely Mirren who, stagnant and lost in her career but possessing of a brimming love of books, finds fulfilment and happiness looking for this book.
Quite whether she locates it must be left to the reading, though surely you can see where this is heading, but The Christmas Book Hunt is as much concerned about taking us on a tour of the book towns of the UK including Hay-on-Wye, Alnwick (more of a literary destination), referred to as Alnir, and Edinburgh and seeding a love connection between Mirren and Theo as it is about finding the near-mythical book for a cancer-stricken Great Aunt Violet.
It is bright, light and fun with some deeply emotional moments, which acts as a love letter to literature and the power of the written word to impact lives for the better, a salutary lesson about who you should give your heart to and trust and the way in life circles can be closed just in time if you want them to be.
The Christmas Book Hunt is heartfelt, adventurish and richly warm and thrilling and sad all at once, which isn’t so much a book about Christmas it is set at Christmas but which channels the hopes and possibilities of the season with some National Treasure and romcom fun thrown in for pleasing good measure.