Book Review - Christmas at the Island Hotel by Jenny Colgan

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Title: Christmas at the Island Hotel

Author: Jenny Colgan

Format reviewed: Paperback

Source: Purchased

Publisher: Sphere

Publication Date: 15th October 2020

Rating: 5 Stars

On the tiny Scottish island of Mure, Christmas preparations are even more hectic than usual . . .

Flora MacKenzie is worried about her brother. Fintan hasn't got over the death of his partner, Colton, and Flora thinks he needs a project.

The Rock - the rambling, disused hotel on the tip of the island - was Colton's passion project before he died. With Flora's help, Fintan is going to get the hotel up and running in time for Christmas, transforming it into a festive haven of crackling log fires and delicious food. But running a hotel, they are about to discover, is not that easy. Especially when their motley staff includes a temperamental French chef, a spoilt Norwegian kitchen boy who can't peel a potato without mutilating his own hand and a painfully shy kitchen assistant who blushes when anyone speaks to her.

Can they pull it together in time for the big opening?

And can Flora help her family find happiness this Christmas?

I love Jenny Colgan's Mure series, and it was a pleasure to be back amongst the MacKenzie family once more. 

Flora is meant to be on maternity leaving having had Douglas, but instead finds herself helping out at the Rock more and more, given Fintan is of course still grieving for Colton, but also finding himself whether he wants to be or not, in charge of seeing Colton's dream come to fruition. 

A large amount of this story features the staff working in the kitchens of The Rock, including the fiery French chef Gaspard, Isla from the Seaside Kitchen who is incredibly shy, and Konstantin who is a young Norwegian man with absolutely no life experience of anything, but has been banished to Mure to get a job. 

We  also get a few catch ups with Saif's story which again intrigued me, and I do wish we could spend more time with him 

And everyone's spoilt and outspoken 5 year old, Agot is back, not happy about Douglas' existence within the family, and generally demanding all manner of things. 

I really enjoyed both getting to know the new characters, the disastrous early services in the restaurant, as well as catching up with all the regulars from previous books.  It felt like I had returned to my home away from home as I am that absorbed with the lives of the Mure inhabitants. 

This was everything I wanted and expected from a Jenny Colgan book, and as a result it was the perfect sort of a read for me. I am already eager to return to Mure to see what everyone is getting up to now.