Boon's Bookcase

 Home Again for Christmas

by

Emily Stone

Lexie is always on the move, but there is one constant in her life - her ' wish jar ' ; the childhood tradition from home that she couldn't leave behind. When Lexie's estranged dad dies, she is shocked to learn that she has inherited half of his travel company in Bath. Her dad's will stipulates that she must work with Theo, her handsome but bad tempered business partner, for  a year. Once the year is over, Lexie intends to leave. But a work trip to sizzling Spain reveals a chemistry between Lexie and Theo that is impossible to deny. Will Lexie find a reason to stay in one place? Will she discover the secret her father kept from her and finally learn the meaning of home?

Review

Lexie loves working abroad, especially in the ski resorts in the winter, but when her father dies and she is summoned to the reading of her father's will, she is shocked to learn that she has inherited half of her father's travel company. The stipulation in the will states that Lexie has to keep the company for a year before even thinking about selling it. The other half of the company is left to her father's friend and colleague, Theo, who is not too pleased to have to share the company he has worked so hard to keep going over the last 5 years.

Lexie and Theo get off on the wrong foot and Lexie cannot wait for the year to be up so that she can sell the company and move on, but when they both go on a work trip to Madrid, there is definitely a chemistry between them which Lexie tries her hardest to deny.

When Lexie was a little girl, she made a wish jar which she would put all the wishes she wanted to come true. Theo finds the jar and asks her what she wished for and Lexie tells him that if she tells him a wish, he will have to answer a question! 

Whilst trying to make things work with the travel company and coming to terms with her grief, Lexie finds herself falling for Theo, but if she is going to sell the company eventually, what will that do to any future she might have with him? and the grief she is going through at the loss of her father both when he was alive and when he died as he had divorced her mother and remarried and had another daughter, Rachel, who is desperate to have a sisterly relationship with Lexie, but Lexie won't let people get close, because when she does, she feels they will leave her again. 

This book is full of great characters. Sometimes you want to bang Lexie and Theo's heads together, but you can understand why they both feel the way they do. It deals with the grief of a daughter and how she comes to terms with that and I really loved how the author dealt sympathetically with that. 

This is the first book I have read by this author and I loved it, so much so, that I have ordered another of her books to read over the festive season!

I couldn't put this book down and finished it within a few days and would thoroughly recommend it.

About the Author

Emily lives and works in Chepstow. She is the author of debut novel Always, in December and One Last Gift, her second successful novel. Always, in December was partly inspired by the death of her mother, when Emily was seven, and wanting to write something that reflected the fact that you carry this grief into adulthood, long after you supposedly move on from the event itself.