An Irish Christmas

A trip to Ireland, around Christmas, have a mother and son on an adventure. The story line is interesting and the people likable. I would recommend it.

Reviewed by Carrie Padgett Certain elements are expected in a holiday movie or book. It shall have a happy ending. There will be stormy weather, families, and faith. It will be entertainment light; undemanding and as comfortable as a grilled cheese sandwich. Melody Carlson's An Irish Christmas meets all those expectations. Colleen Frederick is a new widow with a secret she needs to tell her young adult son. Jamie Frederick has his own burdens to confess to his mother. Set in the early 1960s, Carlson's novel moves from Pasadena, California to Ireland, a trip Colleen hopes will help her and Jamie reconnect and will make the perfect setting for her confession. Mother and son each tell their secrets, confounding the other. When Jamie, angry and defensive, leaves for a day trip and is detained with no way to let his mom know he's fine, Colleen is forced to rely on the God she has had little time for lately. Jamie's world is rocked by Colleen's news and he reacts by becoming defensive and ignoring his own deceit. Jamie must confront himself and his shortcomings in Connemara, including why he deceived his parents back home. The people he meets in Ireland, especially a stranger in a local restaurant, help lead him back to his mother and to his own new relationship with God. The book is written in first person with Colleen and Jamie alternating chapters. Jamie's voice in his sections is too similar to Colleen's; sometimes I missed who I was supposed to be listening to. Jamie often didn't sound like a young adult, much less one in the early 1960s. Carlson does a good job making Ireland real and the Irish characters come alive in the pages of her story. An Irish Christmas will leave you with a light heart and a comforted spirit, much like a comfort food on a rainy day. Armchair Interviews says: Well-written, this is a quick read for the busy holiday season.

In the early sixties, a small family, recently shattered by the loss of a father and undergoing the transitional period of the son into adulthood, takes a journey to Ireland at Christmas time. Both the mother and son, Colleen and Jamie, take turns telling the story as they wrestle with inner demons and secrets they have kept from each other and that have kept them apart. Those secrets can either tear them apart forever, or bring them a touch of God's grace and hope, if they will allow His plan to unfold and not be hard hearted. **** Although slow moving and complex, this is a touching story about imperfect people who are very real. Jamie and Colleen offer the readers hope, because they wear masks with those they love, as so many of us tend to do, unknowingly at times. The grace and love that shines through make it worth the struggle to get through the overly leisurely paced narrative. **** Amanda Killgore