Christmas Kisses on Hollywill Hill

Jackie Ladbury

Contemporary Romance
Christmas is coming and actress, Kirsty Castille, is having a crisis of faith. All around her actors are bagging interesting roles in Christmas pantos while she’s stuck as Nag the pantomime horse. By a stroke of luck, she lands the lead role in a well-known musical and can finally wave goodbye to the cast in the seasonal production of Snow White and the Seven Christmas Puddings. Things get even better when she bonds with handsome chef, Jake Levy, over a piece of squid at her local supermarket. Sadly, romance is the last thing on Jake’s mind. He has a Christmas deadline, an ex-wife to mourn and lots of emotional baggage to drag around – and he certainly wouldn’t fall for someone like Kirsty who craves the limelight: been there, done that. A misunderstanding leads Jake to offer Kirsty a job in his new restaurant and she is savvy enough to realise that she will have to take the job offer if she wants to see more of him. Her charm offensive appears to work, but while he’s cooking up a storm she’s secretly sparkling under the spotlight – until keeping a low profile becomes impossible. The fallout is catastrophic, but as they say in Luvvie Land, the show must go on, even if Kirsty wonders if she’s taken her last curtain call and ruined her chance for love. Read on and immerse yourself in this delightful winter romance as the snow starts to fall and Christmas day comes ever nearer. This gorgeous love story is loosely set in St Albans only half an hour away from London, where chef Jake relocates having lost everything that was dear to him. Enter actress, Kirsty Castille, who lives mostly in a world of her own until she meets Jake and realises she’d quite like to share the real world with him. If only he thought the same, things would be wonderful.

Welcome back everyone, even though the last week’s read wasn’t solely based around Christmas, it had some Christmas moments. To make up for that we’re back to a Christmas book! Yay!

Kirsty and Jake are one of those cute couples that meet by running into each other in the supermarket. I mean, how does that even happen?!

I don’t even know how to talk about this book because one of the issues in the books, the cheating of Jake’s ex-wife, hit home to me while I was reading this. Until reading this book I’d never met anyone who’d been cheated on so the “I can’t believe someone would do that to someone else” was all hypothetical.

The emotional impact of discovering that the person you love with all your heart, who you thought loved you back, is cheating on you is incomprehensible. The lasting impact of this is what Jake is going through — the mistrust, the need to drown your sorrows and the feeling that you’re not good enough for the one you love — and we see this in how he interacts with Kirsty.

I didn’t have much left of the book when I found out about cheating and it put a whole new spin on how I perceived Jake’s actions. I went from thinking he was overreacting and being a bit of a dick, to wondering how he’d stayed so calm and could handle starting a new business and starting a new business.

Writing this review has me thinking about what I found out and I can’t help but feel horrible about that situation. I can truly say I loved this book. Yet at the same time it’s going to be tainted with that memory forever because of the emotional impact it’s had on me.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this review, next week I will be reviewing It’s Not PMS, It’s You by Rich Amooi. Continue to read further down to find out about the author.

Author Bio

Jackie Ladbury writes heart-warming contemporary and historical women’s fiction that is always guaranteed a happy ever after. From spending many years as an air-stewardess and seeing that it really is love that makes the world go around, she determined to put the same sparkle and emotion into her stories. Her life is no longer as exotic (or chaotic) as it was in those heady days of flying as she now lives a quiet life in Hertfordshire with her family and two cats, spending her days making up stories and finding excuses not to go to the gym.

To find out more about Jackie Ladbury, check out her socials:

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