Christmas at the Island Hotel (Mure)

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I didn’t much like any of the characters, who all seem rather two-dimensional and caricatured (particularly Gaspard), and I found the frequent viewpoint-switching annoying - sometimes several times in just one scene. An added bonus, there was no profanity (OK, two bad words but that's all), no graphic sex, and no disparaging comments about specific politicians. Just like her writing, details and descriptions are kept to a minimum leaving the choicest words to tell the story.

But there are some good subplots too - will Dr Saif ever find out whether his long-lost wife is still alive…? Jenny Colgan is the author of numerous Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling novels and has won various awards for her writing, including the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance, the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Award.There are some stream-of-consciousness passages, where a character's thoughts spill out, and that mostly works, but in other places I’d have preferred shorter sentences. Right from the very start of the book, I was scratching my head trying to figure out who the Bookers were.

Things like this just weren't necessary and were confusing to me as a well-established reader of the series. A coming of age tale for both teenage islander Isla and a playboy Norwegian prince, banished on a tiny Scottish islet until he can prove himself useful. Her books have sold more than nine million copies worldwide and in 2015 she was inducted into the Love Stories Hall of Fame. It’s now common knowledge that one of the best tools to tackle the climate crisis is to plant trees.The Rock has to employ some new staff, including a chef - and they get the temperamental Gaspard, a French chef who shouts, swears and smokes, but is a superb cook. And yet… as happens with all the Jenny Colgan books I’ve read, around the half-way mark I realised I was interested in the storylines, and intrigued to know what would happen. I was given ‘Christmas at the Island Hotel’ last Christmas, and although it’s not remotely seasonally appropriate, I decided to read it over the past few days. All that’s left to do is hire a chef and kitchen staff to bring his late husband, Colton’s dream to life. Especially when their motley staff includes a temperamental French chef, a spoilt Norwegian kitchen boy who can't peel a potato without mutilating his own hand and a painfully shy kitchen assistant who blushes when anyone speaks to her.