The Gift Of Happiness by Holly Martin

At the risk of damning with faint praise this book was simply okay.  It ticks the festive boxes but I found the characters and their situations either wildly unrealistic, impossibly twee or an annoying combination of both.  It became clear early on in the book that this tale picks up from an earlier story set in this strange place called Happiness.  As this story deals with characters that seem to have been more or less peripheral previously this isn't really a detriment to enjoying this book.

One of the highlights for me was the replacing of Jesus in the Nativity with a snowman toy and then the taking of photos of Jesus in various outfits around the village.  There was a genuine sense of fun around it and it gave a much needed depth to the character of Ruby.  To be honest if it wasn't for that she would have just come across as fairly man hungry whilst avoiding commitment.

The author also makes an attempt at more raunchy scenes.  Sadly, these really don't work and read like an advert for the condom industry so often are they mentioned.  They are also more cringe than anything but are mercifully short.  Although, anytime Ruby and Jacob find themselves alone together I did wince in anticipation of their inability to keep their hands off each other - fortunately they do seem to be able to exercise a little restraint and can be alone without embarrassing themselves.  It also all felt vaguely incestuous with relationships between Ruby's best friend Willow and Jacob's brother, Jacob's sister and a mystery man who turns out to have a link to Ruby.  Are there really so few options for these fictional people?

I also had major issues with the set up of the village of Happiness; it just doesn't have any grounding in reality and the disparate bunch of characters that seem to live there are like no others found anywhere.  Just all around peculiar in quite an unsettling way.

The festive sentiments go some way to salvaging the novel and the wonderful range of events that Ruby dreams up for the village to take part in are a great idea.  I particularly loved the Angel sculpture idea and it wasn't something I had come across before.

On the whole this just scraped a 3 Star and if it hadn't been for the wonderful sense of seasonal warmth and bonhomie that exudes out of the pages this would have been lucky to get a 2.