Review – One Charmed Christmas by Sheila Roberts

One of my favourite holiday books I’ve read this year is One Charmed Christmas. It’s a story of friends and families boarding a pre-Christmas river cruise to take in the festivities of Christmas markets in Europe. Each guest on the cruise has different hopes and expectations of what the week on the ship will bring to them. One of the reasons I chose this book is that a cruise such as this is on my travel bucket list.

Catherine Pine is dreading the upcoming holiday season. This Christmas will be her second since the death of her husband. She has recently had some health challenges, and requires additional treatment after the holidays. When her good friend Denise invites her to join her on the river cruise Catherine willingly accepts. After all, both her adult children will be away with their families for Christmas this year. Also on the ship, we meet Rudy Nichols, a doctor who is on the ship with his daughter Athena, Trevor March a chocolatier with his brother Kurt, and Sophie Miles a hypochondriac and personal shopper on the ship with her sister Sierra. Over the course of the cruise, we learn more about the characters as they travel along the Rhine visiting port after port of holiday cheer.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters are well-developed and likeable and the descriptions of the activities on the cruise (as well as the food and drinks) allowed me to escape the realities of today’s world. I loved the characters as they bonded throughout the week and the romances that blossomed along the way. Not everything is cheerful in this book – it discusses the very real challenges that face each of us in our everyday life. But this is what makes the story real and relatable. The theme of this story is one of hope, love and joy.

I listened to the audiobook version which was performed by Ann Marie Gideon who did a great job of narrating this story. I loved the enthusiastic and charming tone of her voice which added to this beautiful story. I listened to the book at my usual 1.25x speed which I found to be perfect. I would not hesitate to recommend listening to the audiobook version of this book for those who enjoy this format.

My rating: ? ? ? ?/5.