Widow Fern has recently moved to the small village of Chesterwood with her young daughter Lily and has fitted in perfectly. She has made plenty of friends with the mums from her daughter’s new primary school. However, she is struggling to move on after her husband’s death but with the help of her new best friends Cara and Davina, she is slowly starting to feel less pain and maybe thinking about love again.

When the local food bank is in jeopardy of closing due to funds for the rent of the building they hire, Fern comes up with an idea, for the village to host a real-life advent calendar that will involve all the villagers.

The advent calendar is going to take a lot of planning and effort to make it a success and to earn enough money to keep the food bank open and with it already being the end of October can Fern and the villagers pull it off as well as deal with their own private problems too?

Who doesn’t love a festive read? When I first heard about The Christmas Calendar Girls I was thinking this was going to be one of those books about a group of women getting naked and posing for a charity calendar, how wrong could I be! This book is nothing like that, in fact the advent calendar idea is completely new to me and I think it is a great idea – you will have to read the book to see what it is all about.

Fern is a lovely woman who has had a few hard years after the death of her husband and is now bringing up her daughter Lily alone. She is at that point where she thinks it may be time to move on and possibly find romance again, but at the same time feels guilty.

The villagers are a wonderful community of people and I just wish that more communities came together in real life and helped one another out.

My tiny nag about the book is how many times it was mentioned that Fern’s husband had died, especially within the first few chapters, it felt like it was stated on every few pages – I haven’t counted, but it became a little repetitive after a while.

The Christmas Calendar Girls is a lovely festive read that is exceptionally heart-warming, poignant and a lot of fun. Add it to your festive reads list, you will not be sorry.

About the Author

Samantha Tonge lives in Manchester UK with her husband and children. She studied German and French at university and has worked abroad, including a stint at Disneyland Paris. She has travelled widely.

When not writing she passes her days cycling, baking and drinking coffee. Samantha has sold many dozens of short stories to women’s magazines.

She is represented by the Darley Anderson literary agency. In 2013, she landed a publishing deal for romantic comedy fiction with HQDigital at HarperCollins and in 2014, her bestselling debut, Doubting Abbey, was shortlisted for the Festival of Romantic Fiction best Ebook award.

In 2015 her summer novel, Game of Scones, hit #5 in the UK Kindle chart and won the Love Stories Awards Best Romantic Ebook category. In 2018 Forgive Me Not, heralded a new direction into darker women’s fiction with publisher Canelo. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association romantic comedy award.

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