A festive and feel-good romance is not my usual kind of read but The Country Village Christmas Show appealed purely for the reason that it features a mature female protagonist and the premise emphasised its community focus. Sadly, however, I found the novel rather superficial and felt it lacked any real depth of emotion making it impossible to relate to with a bad case of insta-love and flimsy characterisation. Whilst the novel is easily readable women’s fiction I didn’t feel there was enough plot development to make for a particularly stimulating read.
Forty-five-year-old former library assistant and mother to a grown-up son, Clare, finds her world upended when her husband of over twenty years asks for a divorce. With the family house sold she reluctantly returns to her childhood home in the village of Little Bramble to live with her seventy-five-year-old mother, Elaine, despite their emotionally distant relationship. Realising that life has passed her by whilst she was completely devoted to her family and son, Clare comes to the conclusion that it’s about time she did something for herself and finds her own path in life. Walking Goliath her mother’s Great Dane sees Clare bump into faces old and new, quickly reconnecting with her former best-friend, Jenny, and getting off on the wrong foot with the handsome forty-something village vet, Sam Wilson. However Elaine seems a shadow of her former self and Clare is convinced it is because the amateur dramatics society, which her mother was so passionate about, folded after the old village hall burned down two years earlier. The arrival of Clare’s flamboyant twenty-one-year-old son, Kyle, with romantic dilemmas of his own sees them team up and decide to organise a Christmas show to christen the new community hall and simultaneously revitalise Elaine!
As Clare contemplates her future and throws herself into village life she keeps crossing paths with vet Sam and feels an undeniable spark. A renowned bachelor and living with his disabled younger sister, Sam has baggage of his own but even he can’t deny the mutual attraction they share, but is either of them ready to take a chance on love? As the story moves between characters and storylines I found it a little too straightforward to the point of boring, not helped by the dialogue which didn’t ever feel natural. The romance between Clare and Sam is unbelievable insta-love and both characters are rather bland meaning a total absence of chemistry and I found their romance the least interesting component of the story. The Christmas show theme is also rather perfunctory and takes until nearly halfway through the book before the idea is proposed. The auditions and build-up are likewise all a little half-hearted leaving me feeling like it had simply been tacked on to fit the festive book genre. Despite the overarching element of romance in the story it is very much one of deepening connections with family, friends and the community. Whilst I appreciated this I did feel the point was heavily laboured with numerous declarations of the value of this new support network rather than simply illustrating it far more eloquently with a more meaningful story