Winter Street

Score: 3/5 Bookmarks

Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand was an okay enough holiday read, but I didn’t love it. There was an abundance of characters, none of which I particularly liked, or that we really got to know on more than a superficial level.

I’d heard really great things about the author and this was the first book of hers I’d picked up, so I had reasonably high expectations. I have yet to pick up a really great contemporary holiday novel, so perhaps it’s the genre? Do authors feel pressure to put out a festive book the way musicians do with bad Christmas albums perhaps?

I’m not writing her off yet though, so if you have a favorite Hilderbrand novel let me know in the comments.

I listened to it on audiobook, which you can get by clicking the button below, or you can get the physical book here.

Synopsis:

In bestseller Elin Hilderbrand's first Christmas novel, a family gathers on Nantucket for a holiday filled with surprises.

Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket's Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four, all of them grown and living in varying states of disarray. Patrick, the eldest, is a hedge fund manager with a guilty conscience. Kevin, a bartender, is secretly sleeping with a French housekeeper named Isabelle. Ava, a school teacher, is finally dating the perfect guy but can't get him to commit. And Bart, the youngest and only child of Kelley's second marriage to Mitzi, has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines.

As Christmas approaches, Kelley is looking forward to getting the family together for some quality time at the inn. But when he walks in on Mitzi kissing Santa Claus (or the guy who's playing Santa at the inn's annual party), utter chaos descends. With the three older children each reeling in their own dramas and Bart unreachable in Afghanistan, it might be up to Kelley's ex-wife, nightly news anchor Margaret Quinn, to save Christmas at the Winter Street Inn.

Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, a small house fire, many shots of whiskey, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling, in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays.