Book Review: On Christmas Hill by Faith Mortimer

Who doesn’t want to believe in the magic of Christmas?

We all long to hear good news, encouraging stories of goodwill, unexpected reunions, miraculous changes of fortune, and happy endings, especially at Christmas time.

I love the way seasonal literature and films enhance our experience of this ancestral need to believe that good can and will conquer evil due to the symbolism we associate with a child who was born at this time.

Those who follow my blog know how I love to reread the classics. Every winter, I read Andersen’s The Little Match Girl Dickens’ Christmas Carol,  and O. Henry’s  The Gift of the Maggi.

I also make sure I watch While you were sleeping, You’ve got mail,  Home Alone, and The Bishop’s Wife, which all include direct references to the Christmas season.  My all-time favourite has to be Miracle on 34^th Street.

I can’t help it. I’m an incurable romantic.

I believe good people attract good luck, so good things happen to good people, eventually, in spite of the difficulties they encounter. Sometimes, reality proves me wrong, and wonderful people have to go through terrible moments, and the good moments never seem to come, but there is so much that we don’t know, can’t see, and will never understand…

A few days ago, while in the mood for a new ‘Christmas read’, quite by chance, I picked up On Christmas Hill by Faith Mortimer.

It’s a novel that is so easy to love, so delightful to read, and so hard to forget, that I’m sure I’ll be rereading it next Christmas.

It has all the Ingredients for a great romantic read: a lost love letter delivered much later, but not too late; an unfaithful husband; a cruel jealous girlfriend; a cheating boss who sacks ex-mistress; a negligent and miserly landlord; parents who abandon their child in need; a wealthy alpha male (aka Byronic hero), a single mum with many worries (aka damsel in distress), and a fatherless child who writes a letter to Father Christmas asking for a father for Christmas.

The good are very good, generous, honest and gullible, while the bad are very bad, selfish, scheming, and cruelly intolerant.

The plot is gradually unveiled as the characters grow in depth and events twist and turn until we reach an ending Father Christmas would approve of.

I’m sorry I finished it so quickly, but luckily you still have this wonderful experience ahead of you. Read it and you will believe in Father Christmas, at least for a few wonderful hours.