The Mother of all Christmases by Milly Johnson

The Mother of All Christmases by Milly Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - in and out over 2 days

Pages - 400

Publisher - Simon & Schuster

Source - Bought signed edition from the author

Blurb from Goodreads

THE MOST PERFECT CHRISTMAS FEEL-GOOD READ!
'Every time you discover a new Milly book, it’s like finding a pot of gold' Heat

Eve Glace - co-owner of the theme park Winterworld - is having a baby and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband Jacques should renew their wedding vows with all the pomp that was missing the first time. But growing problems at Winterworld keep distracting them …

Annie Pandoro and her husband Joe own a small Christmas cracker factory, are well set up and happy together despite life never blessing them with a much-wanted child. But when Annie finds that the changes happening to her body aren’t typical of the menopause but pregnancy, her joy is uncontainable.

Palma Collins has agreed to act as a surrogate, hoping the money will get her out of the gutter in which she finds herself. But when the couple she is helping split up, is she going to be left carrying a baby she never intended to keep?

Annie, Palma and Eve all meet at the ‘Christmas Pudding Club’, a new directive started by a forward-thinking young doctor to help mums-to-be mingle and share their pregnancy journeys. Will this group help each other to find love, contentment and peace as Christmas approaches?




My Review

Eve, Annie and Palma all end up in the "Christmas Pudding Club" a new group supporting mums to be. Finding their feet as their bodies change they happen upon friendship which helps as they each battle with things in their personal lives. Palma was a womb for hire for a well to do couple who desperately want a baby. Annie had all but given up hope for having a baby, facing menopause she throws everything into her cracker factory with her hubby Joe. Eve and Jacques have all their focus on a winter theme park and have no time for extending their family, every focus is getting the park up and running yet things seem to be going wrong at every turn!

We meet each of the characters and glimpses into their lives and how they come to be in the club. Each has their own issues in life and we see how they deal with it and how their relationships blossom, struggle and interact.

It is a moving story you can't help but get invested in the characters and end up on a very emotive rollercoaster. Good guys and bad guys, kindness, dregs of humanity, greed, corruption, love, the circle of life it is a busy wee book and it was interesting to read about the cracker process, well I thought so. Each of the women are different and those they meet in the club, it is an interesting bunch of characters and I would have liked to have read more on each of them, the ones who don't play a huge part. The characters however well involved or little flashes all bring something to the tale and are carved out to make the reader want more, well I did. Humour, happiness, fun, sad, quirky and even some hard hitting serious issues dealt with respectfully. I do enjoy Johnson, I have yet to read one of hers I didn't like and I think this is one of her top books, 4.5/5 for me this time!

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