Caffeinated Reviewer

Looking for a holiday read? Sophia Rose is here with a review of Merry by Susan Breen. Grab a hot cocoa as she shares her thoughts on this deep, thoughtful holiday women’s fiction.

A mother’s valiant efforts to bring her family the joy of Christmas go haywire when she finds herself haunted by the angry ghost of Charles Dickens.

This sparkling, cozy novel is perfect for readers of Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow and anyone who looks forward to watching It’s a Wonderful Life each December!

Merry Bingham used to love Christmas—until she started worrying all the time about family, money, and death. The only thing that continues to bring her joy is reading from her heirloom edition of A Christmas Carol, autographed by Charles Dickens himself and passed down through five generations of her family. Now, as she waits for the results of the medical tests that will tell her whether this Christmas season will be her last, Merry prepares to give her book to the next generation. Except none of her three children wants it.

Merry refuses to surrender Christmas or Dickens without a fight, so she sells the book and uses the money to take her family to London. She will fill them with Christmas joy even if she has to cram it down their throats.

But the harder Merry pushes, the worse everything gets. Her children erupt into vicious arguments, her gentle husband stops talking to her, her deluxe rental apartment is not what was promised. Oh, and she keeps seeing the ghost of Charles Dickens around town—and he is not happy with her.

Fans of family stories, classic literature, Christmas novels, and holiday season magic will adore Merry.

Sophia Rose’s Review

A health scare leads a woman to take drastic measures to spend what she is afraid might be her last Christmas with family.  Susan Breen is a new to me author and I was dizzy with delight to give her Merry a go when I saw the deep connection it has with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol complete with Dickensonian spots around London and Christmas ghosts.

Merry has an accident and while being treated learns of a deeper concern.  She takes this as a sign that she needs to pull together her kids and drag them off to London for the perfect traditional family Christmas as her last hurrah.  She has a family heirloom, an original copy of A Christmas Carol and she is ready to sell it to finance this chance to get her struggling kids back on track.

Disasters at every turn, messy family dysfunction, wise Christmas ghosts, and Merry’s gritty determination to fix all bring not so surprising results.  It was indeed a not so Merry Christmas had by all.  It got over the top and hilarious as well as emotional and dramatic as people who probably shouldn’t come together just because they share DNA are miserable and act it, but slowly the soul-searching and mishaps lead to an understanding for Merry to have her own A Christmas Carol Scroogish epiphany about her own life stepping outside the traditional lines and accepting rather than forcing things.

All in all, Merry was not a comfy cozy with Christmas sugary sweet moments, but one of those hard-fought, patched up disasters that came out where it needed to be in the end.  I struggled reading it and had to put it down a few times, but wanted to see it through and see Merry find her way in the end.  I’ll have to keep a watch out for Susan Breen’s stuff with this deep, thoughtful holiday women’s fiction surprise I got in my stocking.  Want something that digs deep and misses the holiday sugar, give Merry a try.

Amazon | Audible

About Susan Breen

SUSAN BREEN is the award-winning author of The Fiction Class and the Maggie Dove mystery series. She is the 2024 winner of the Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition. She is especially honored to have won the Westchester Library Association's Washington Irving Award for "readability, literary quality, and wide general appeal." Her new novel, MERRY, is about Charles Dickens, dogs, family, London, vacations gone wrong, love, guilt and books. Not in that order. Susan teaches novel-writing at Gotham Writers in New York City.

Website

About Sophia Rose

Sophia is a quiet though curious gal who dabbles in cooking, book reviewing, and gardening. Encouraged and supported by an incredible man and loving family. A Northern Californian transplant to the Great Lakes Region of the US. Lover of Jane Austen, Baseball, Cats, Scooby Doo, and Chocolate.

Goodreads

About Kimberly

Kimberly is a coffee loving book addict who reads and listens to fictional stories in all genres. Whovian, Ravenclaw, Howler and proud Nonna. She owns and manages Caffeinated PR. The coffee is always on and she is ready to chat. BlueSky | Facebook | Instagram

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