The Christmas Widow by Jillian Eaton

Hey everyone,

In keeping with the festive season, today I’m reviewing The Christmas Widow by Jillian Eaton, a sweet historical romance novella set during Christmas. So without further ado I give you...

The book:

Known as “Mad Lady Bea” by the townspeople of Blooming Glen, Lady Beatrice Tumbley has not left her estate since the tragic death of her husband on Christmas Eve. Terrified of the outside world and the dangers lurking within it, she lives in complete seclusion, determined never to love again. 

Until one cold, snowy night a handsome stranger comes knocking… and shows Beatrice her heart is not quite as frozen as she believes it to be.

My thoughts:

I want that dress. It is so pretty that I don’t even care that I have absolutely no where to wear it. I could dance around the house and pretend I was a princess from the olden days... Anyway enough with my insanity and on with the actual review for The Christmas Widow by Jillian Eaton.

I liked this book. It was a light, easy, quick read that I finished within a day. Bea or Lady Beatric Tumbley at the start of the book is still clearly grief-stricken over the unexpected death of her husband Jeffrey. Arguably it has sent her a little insane as she now doesn’t leave the house, closes all the curtains for the whole winter period and just generally appears to have stopped living.

After his abrupt passing she clung to her grief as one might a child, using it to anchor herself to the memories of a man she would never see again... Memories of their life together, so perfect and blissful, until one snowy night when everything was torn asunder

When the hero enters, a Mr. Jack Emerson, he immediately starts to shake up our young closed-off widow’s ordered existence. He doesn’t care about her apparent ‘madness’ and instead sees the beautiful passionate women beneath the grief. Being a novella the romance does happen very quickly but at the same it didn’t feel rushed or under-developed. Perhaps some slight criticism is I wish we had had more from Jack’s viewpoint instead of just one chapter.

She was a woman all but begging to be loved, and even though Jack knew he was undeserving of her, every part of him bristled at the very thought of another man claiming her as his own

Another slight issues I had with this book was a certain scene with a fox. It fairly important to the plot so I won’t ruin it for you but to me it just felt forced and I wasn’t really sure why it was included. In terms of whether this worked as a Christmas book my answer would be it did and it didn’t. The winter setting played an integral part of the story, however, Christmas was really only mentioned in the epilogue and was only briefly mentioned in the rest of the book.

Overall I enjoyed this book but it wasn’t a stand-out-this-is-amazing read for me.

My rating:

Happy reading everyone and see you next time!