#BlogTour ’25 Days In December’ by Poppy Alexander

About the book…

You can’t plan for the unexpected…

Kate Potter used to know what happiness felt like.

A few years ago, she was full of energy, excited by every possibility. But that was back when everything was different, before Kate’s husband went away with the army and didn’t come home. She can’t even remember what it felt like to be in love.

Then Kate meets Daniel. Recognising her loneliness reflected in his eyes, Kate vows to try and help bring him out of his shell. But as Kate plans to bring life back to Daniel, she might have stumbled on the secret to happiness…

Can one chance meeting change two lives?

Huge thanks to the wonderful Alainna from Orion Books for the chance to be on the blogtour for ’25 Days In December’ by Poppy Alexander which is out now in ebook format  and from 28th November in paperback !

Well this book is like an advent calendar of joy to read, it is seasonal, heartwarming and 100% perfect!
What I loved about it was the realness of it which accentuated the love stories at its’ heart, the poverty which Kate suffers through despite her best efforts to work as hard as she can, the life which Daniel is sleep walking through after losing his sister…all of it is so familiar and yet given a sprinkling of Christmas magic!
The reality is that Christmas is a harder time for most of than we let on, and often we go to the brink of bankruptcy to pay for what the magazines and shops will tell us is ‘the ideal’ Christmas.

What this book makes you aware of is that a)you aren’t the only one feeling the pressure of the season, other people are rejecting conspicuous consumerism and focussing on the people around them. This will be the best Christmas because you are together and that is enough. Poppy throws a spotlight on this in the representation of the small shops on the ‘Christmas Steps’ where the independent shopkeepers are facing being turfed out of their buildings by ridiculous raises in rent. Added to this is the charity campaign being run by Kate and Pat, workers for Portman’s company, an organisation that values money more than its employees. Their boss on whose good side they have to stay if they want a job come the new year, is to raise 1000 pounds for a local charity. They decide on The Apple Cafe, a grassroots organisation which trains up people with learning difficulties and/or physical difficulties which makes employment even more challenging than those without these barriers.

Beth, a girl with Down’s Syndrome and Will with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome really excel at making cakes, meringues and brownies, but without footfall and publicity, it looks like the cafe will not be around much longer either.

Kate and her son Jack are facing Christmas without Tom, husband and father who died in Army service. another Christmas with little money to spend on frivolities and little goodwill about the season.Enter fairy godmother , Seema, Kate’s best friend who seizes the opportunity to drag Kate back to herself and creates a 25 day list of goals where she can finally surface from the grief which is wearing her to her bones. Her focus on her son, Jack, means she has little energy left over for herself, what she has goes into working a thankless job for an ungrateful boss who dangles her job in front of her knowing she and Jack cannot survive without this income.

I defy anyone to read the exchanges between Kate and her boss and Kate and the school board without grinding your teeth and wanting to throw something. Kate is struggling so hard and literally no one is prepared to see her or give her a break at all. And yet, Christmas is the time for miracles, and as Kate creates a calendar for her son, and starts tackling Seema’s goals, reading this book becomes like watching a poinsettia bloom. As she finds herself and Daniel begins to start living again by centimetres at first and then inches, you see how they keep meeting and then being pulled apart.

Willing them and the causes they are supporting on is the reader, by now totally invested and engaged in what will happen, if ever there was a season of magic then Christmas must surely be it!
This is as Christmassy as an Elf sitting in a rocking chair, by a roaring fire, next to a Christmas tree drinking egg nog and watching ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’

It’s life affirming, beautiful and so lovely that it is going to become a seasonal re-read for this reader and if you don;t find yourself whooping with joy, tears brimming in your eyes at least 5 times whilst reading ‘25 Days In December’, then I will eat my -Christmas-hat!

About the author…

Poppy Alexander wrote her first book when she was five. There was a long gap in her writing career while she was at school, and after studying classical music at university, she decided the world of music was better off without her and took up public relations, campaigning, political lobbying and a bit of journalism instead.

She takes an anthropological interest in family, friends and life in her West Sussex village (think, The Archers crossed with Twin Peaks) where she lives with her husband, children and various other pets.

Poppy also writes as Rosie Howard and Sarah Waights

Twitter @PoppyAlexBooks @SarahWaightsWriter @orionbooks