Saturday 12 December 2015

Book Review - Callie's Christmas Countdown by Julie Ryan

Amazon UK
Title: Callie's Christmas Countdown
Author: Julie Ryan
Format reviewed: Ebook
Source: Brook Cottage Books
Publisher: Self Published
Rating: 4 Stars


Callie is an event planner, organising weddings and corporate parties. What she'd really love however, is to organise the perfect Christmas. How difficult can it be after all? She simply needs to get her divorced parents talking to each other, sort out a Christmas Eve wedding for the daughter of a millionaire and wait for her hunky, rich boyfriend to propose. What could possibly go wrong?

Callie's Christmas Countdown is a funny look at a long run up to Christmas. Callie loves Christmas, and while her friends are spending the August bank holiday, on a beach in Devon, she has stayed home, so she can plan how, she and her friends and family can have the most perfect Christmas this year. 

As part of her plan, she wants her parents to get back together, to have a brilliant Christmas meal with her flatmates, and for things to get more serious with her boyfriend. 

Callie also has a Christmas Eve wedding to organise for work, and the bride barely has time to see Callie or talk to her about anything. 

Between friends and colleagues not acting as you would have expected them to, things don't go that smoothly in the run up to Christmas. Callie continually jumping to the wrong conclusions about her boyfriend don't help. 

There is a good cast of supporting characters, and although I didn't really take to Callie's boyfriend, her flatmates are lovely, especially Rosie (who seems to be in a world of her own, most of the time). Laurel, the bride of the wedding that Callie is organising, and Annabel, Nathaniel's friend (Callie's boyfriend), who rom appearances seems to be up to no good. 

All the chapters are very short, so if you like dipping in and out of a book for a chapter or two at a time, you can easily do that with Callie's Christmas countdown. 

Callie's Christmas Countdown is Julie Ryan's first Christmas book, and first attempt at a chick lit story. It works really well, and is a great novella to get your excited for the Christmas season. There is a lovely sense of humour in this story, and I loved how Callie seemed to care more about others than herself. 

Thank you to JB at Brook Cottage Books for this review copy. This was my honest opinion. 

About Julie Ryan


Julie was born and brought up in a mining village near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. She graduated with a BA (hons) in French Language and Literature from Hull University. Since then she has lived and worked as a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language in France, Greece, Poland and Thailand. She now lives in rural Gloucestershire with her husband, son and two cats, a rescue cat and a dippy cat with half a tail.  She is so passionate about books that her collection is now threatening to outgrow her house, much to her husband’s annoyance, as she can’t bear to get rid of any! They have been attempting to renovate their home for the last ten years.

She is the author of the Greek Island Mystery series, Jenna’s Journey, Sophia’s Secret and Pandora’s Prophecy, each of which can be read as a standalone. She considers Greece to be her spiritual home and visits as often as she can.


Twitter  @julieryan18




GIVEAWAY
1.£5.00 amazon giftcard uk OR $10.00 paypal int
2. ebook Callie's Christmas Countdown


4 comments:

  1. Thank you Rachel for a lovely review. So glad you enjoyed my Christmas story x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oooh, so happy for you, Julie! What a fab review! Thanks for sharing, Rachel. :) xx

    ReplyDelete

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