Article contributed by Johanna H
The Christmas holiday is close and we want to surround ourselves with good reads for the remainder of the year! There are tons of cute Christmas books to read about families surviving under one roof for Christmas (Seven Days of Us), restoring a cute hotel in time for Christmas on a Scottish island (Christmas at the Island Hotel), a single girl who bakes dog candy meeting a guy at the dog park (Pupcakes)…the list could go on and not to mention the true classic, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens!
But if you don’t need a book that throws Christmas candy in your face, sings Christmas carols to you, or sparkles red and green, here are three books to enjoy by the fireplace, away from the family for a little while.
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
Dannie is an ambitious lawyer living in New York. She has always had a timed plan in life that at a certain age, certain things will happen. At the age of 28, she is to get engaged. Now she is 28 years old, going for an interview for her dream job, and in the evening, her boyfriend David is proposing to her. Everything is exactly as she planned and thought it should be. When they come home from the proposal at the perfect restaurant, she falls asleep and wakes up five years later. She’s in an apartment she does not recognise, and there is a man there and she doesn’t know who it is. What happens?! All of a sudden, she wakes up in her usual apartment again with David. She knows it was not a dream, she looked into the future.
It is a perfect book to be wrapped in! A feel-good book with a twist that makes you want to read more and if you are looking for something cosy to read on your holiday, this is a perfect book for you.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Between life and death, there is a library. When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself, but things are about to change. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren’t always what she imagined they’d be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger. Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
If you are a book fan, this is an obvious choice for you. A book about a library with limitless numbers of books, come on! It is a heart-breaking book that is hard to put down.
The Silver Road by Stina Jackson
Lelle has been searching for his daughter Lina for three years as she has been missing since she was waiting for the morning bus to get to her summer job. There has been no signs or progress in three years, but Lelle is still looking every night, driving along the Silver road, searching in the dark. He can’t go on with his life until he knows what happened to his daughter. In the book we also follow the teenage girl Meja, who moves up to the northern parts of Sweden with her mother, who has gotten a new boyfriend. Meja is in the same age that Lina was when she disappeared. With time Meja and Lelle’s stories intertwine.
A thrilling crime book, that mostly focuses on relationships, rather than the actual crime. The police are not a big part of the book, but Lelle and Meja. You get to read beautiful descriptions of the northern Sweden that makes you want to go there.
Two bonus classics: Wuthering Heights and Little Woman
If you haven’t read either of these two classic novels, you ought to do so! What better time than Christmas to take the time to read a true classic. The hard and true love between Heathcliff and Catherine, or the relationship between the March sisters, these are books you won’t regret reading!
