A lovely, quaint and fluffy festive read. It did what it says on the tin and nothing more really. I'm probably not the right audience for a book like this, but I wanted to dip my toe into a romance book set at Christmas.

What a fantastic festive read this proved to be
With Norwegian traditions and a mystery.
Set on an island to which Holly escapes
And where she gets in lots of near scrapes!

Arriving in darkness, with no lights shining bright
She endeavours to find her brother's home despite the night.
A yellow-eyed cat comes to her rescue
And brings along Tor to help her, too.

Next morning she's able to find her way
To the home where she's meant to stay.
She discovers that Tor is living a hermit's life
Avoiding the islanders, avoiding strife.

Secrets about why both have escaped here
Are eventually revealed and made clear.
However there are barriers to be battered away
And traditional festivities to join in along the way.

An insightful read, sharing so much I didn't know
And a lovely romance, too, I highly recommend you give it a go!
For my complementary copy of this book, I say thank you,
I throughly enjoyed reading it and this is my honest review.

Christmas Island by Natalie Normann

Set in Norway doctor Holli escapes London and her job trials and troubles to visit her brother in Norway’s Christmas Island.

A reasonably well written rom com. A lovely warm and cozy hug of a book with some fabulous characters, humour and Natalie’s beautiful descriptions of the small Norwegian island and eventual romance. 3.5/5

The cultural references in this were second to none. I don't think I've seen such investment in ensuring there was cultural accuracy in a fluffy romance before - well done to Normann for putting in the work! As I said, this is a fluffy romance and that is a very widely accepted romance genre. If you're looking for anything more then you're in the wrong place, but Natalie Normann is an excellent writer of fluffy romances if that is what you're after! This was quick and sweet and easy to devour. Holly was a little too ditsy for me to fully imagine naturally but other than that her mannerisms came across wonderfully in the writing.

I really enjoyed reading about so many different traditions, foods, and experience for a holiday in another country. This book however is about peeling back the layers just like all the clothes you’d need to put on to stay warm if you were in this characters shoes.

Holly is a bit quirky but then again aren’t we all in some way. It’s a good read for relaxing by the fireplace or filling time between festivities but I found it didn’t have much depth to it. Overall cute and an easy read.

Forget about Nordic noir and embrace the Nordic charm of Natalie Normann’s enchanting, uplifting and delicious new novel, Christmas Island.

Being a doctor is all Londoner Holly Greene has ever wanted. She has worked hard, made umpteen sacrifices upon sacrifices and has made becoming a medic her number one priority. With her dream finally within her reach, Holly should be on top of the world – until things go pear-shaped and she could end up losing everything she has always wanted. What’s worse, Holly only has herself to blame and needing a place to lick her wounds and escape from the mess that is her life, she decides to seek sanctuary in her brother’s rustic home off the coast of Norway. However, on her arrival, Holly feels as if she has stumbled on a scene from a horror film rather than the winter wonderland she had initially imagined. However, Holly soon realises that first impressions can prove rather deceptive…

As if her life couldn’t possible get any worse, Holly nearly stumbles off a cliff until she is rescued from certain death by a yellow-eyed cat and his owner, Tor, who might share a name with a character made famous by a Hollywood heartthrob, but who couldn’t be farther from anyone’s idea of a romantic hero. Tor is grouchy and reclusive and has absolutely no interest whatsoever in letting anybody breach the impenetrable defenses he has built around himself. Tor has got his own demons to contend with and he is not interested in making friends, but will Holly end up changing his mind?

As their feelings for one another intensify in the most unexpected and surprising of ways, will Holly and Tor find the happiness which has long been denied to them? Or will they need a Christmas miracle to stop hiding in the shadows and embrace a love that will last a lifetime?

The literary equivalent of a great big hug and a slice of your favourite cake, it is absolutely impossible not to fall head over heels in love with Natalie Normann’s fabulous new novel, Christmas Island. Charming, moving, feel-good and wonderfully romantic, Christmas Island is hygge in book form and readers will not be able to resist this beautifully written tale of second chances, hopeful beginnings and happy endings – not to mention deliciously described baked goods that will make everyone’s mouth water.

A book that will touch the heart and brighten up even the darkest and most dismal of days, Natalie Normann’s Christmas Island is a must-read this holiday season.

I received this book complimentary from NetGalley but all opinions are my own.

A two week romance with 2 people from different countries meeting in a third. I just think that’s a weird way to make a serious commitment to each other. I liked the story but didn’t love the characters. This one just wasn’t for me.

I love Natalie Normann’s Christmas Island! The book takes us to an island off the coast of Norway, where Holly is running away from her London life and taking a winter break on the small island. Her stay quickly becomes anything but lonely when she is met with the kindness of a grouchy, yet lovable hermit and the bond they form is truly something special. The stunning Norwegian landscape comes to life with rich detail and characters that I instantly grew to care for. The way Natalie portrays Christmas and the hygge is pure magic and has me ready to take a winter holiday myself! Christmas Island is a charming read and I couldn't recommend it more!

I didn’t realize that this was the second book in a duo and now I want to read the first! This was the perfect story to get sucked into for a cozy Christmas read. Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC!

Ooh this was such a cute little festive read! I loved reading about the Norwegian Christmas traditions! And the food! 😍 it’s making me want to go to Norway for December next year!

I loved Holly and Tor, and of course Frøy. The whole community on this island was just amazing, I love a good book that creates a small knit wholesome community and Natalie Normann definitely makes that in this book. I didn’t realise that it’s actually second in a series, but don’t worry it’s still so good to read as a standalone! But now I want to go back and read Summer Island and read more about how Jack fell in love with the island!

It’s such a lush little read to cosy up in front of the fire with some festive treats and escape to a perfect Christmassy place!

If you’ve ever taken an extended overseas holiday, chances are you’ve experienced the interesting existential remove that happens when you are plucked from your everyday life and find yourself looking back at your life and into your soul in ways you simply don’t do when the priorities of the day are catching a train or making sure you get your mountain of work done.

The day-to-day is so unceasing and demanding that stopping to think for a minute, and beyond that, to actually ruminate on what your life is like and whether it’s actually what you want is all but impossible; but once you’re out of that pell-mell rut, you have a rare chance to sit back and muse on who you are, who you want to be and where you’d like to go.

It can be quite revelatory, something that Londoner, doctor Holly Greene, experiences when she accepts an invitation from her brother Alex to come and visit him and his Norwegian wife Ninni, and their infant daughter Rosie, on a small North Sea island off the west coast of Norway.

It’s her flight from a pianful reality, a literal and figurative one that includes a ferry ride in the dark of the Norwegian early evening, which forms the beating exploratory heart of Christmas Island by Natalie Normann, a cosy rom-com story of one woman’s escape from the crushing weight of an incident of an incident at the hospital where she works which has the potential to end her career.

She desperately hopes it won’t, but having no power over the resolution of a traumatic situation partly of her own making, she decides the only sensible place to be is far from London, and where further than this small island of a few hundred souls in a country that has enveloped and adopted her brother and which she hopes will, temporarily at least, do the same for her.

Initial impressions aren’t that favourable, what with icy slush and winter rain and a near-miss when she almost falls off a towering cliff in the dark – the absence of street lights, while romantically evocative, does make navigating your way around an unfamiliar landscape a distinct challenge – with Holly only rescued from a messy death on the rocks below by a giant, furry cat named Frøy and his taciturn owner, Tor (not “Thor” as he’s keen to point out), a man who’s renting a house on the island and has become known in the short time he’s been there as “the recluse”.

The meeting of these two people, fleeing their unpalatable realities and landing in the same isolated spot, isn’t exactly a meet-cute with Holly suspicious of the gruff, cranky man who takes her back to his home to recuperate for the night after the scary incident, and Tor groaning inwardly that his bleak isolation, freely chosen and zealously guarded, has just been rent asunder.

While they get on well enough, with Holly grateful for Tor’s gentlemanly hospitality and Frøy’s boundary-crossing willingness to snuggle with anyone who offers him affection, this initial meeting doesn’t augur well for an enduring connection between two people who simply want to keep other people at bay for a while.

But this is a romantic comedy and a Christmas-centric story of healing and wholeness in the lead-up to the festive season, and so you know that sooner or later Holly and Tor will see in each other what they need to figure out the rest of their lives.

While the overall storyline of Christmas Island is well and truly by the rom-com book, Normann crafts a refreshingly warm and original take on the idea of escaping from your usual setting to a wholly different one and finding unexpected answers there.

Both Tor and Holly, who quickly bonds with store owner Alma and her husband Jens, school teacher Britt and a host of other friendly islanders while she waits for Alex, Ninni and Rosie to return from spending time with Ninni’s mother in Spain where’s she’s fled for warmth and light, are in search of something out of the ordinary, and while neither will openly admit to that, it’s what drives the narrative in this charmingly lovely novel which brims with the verdant appeal of accidental new beginnings.

The use of the word “accidental” is deliberate because neither party, Holly in particular, is thinking in those terms – they just want to get away from immediate emotional stress and strain, driven by an instinctive need to lessen the emotional pressure pushing down hard upon them – but a new beginning is precisely what they get in a story that is filled with gorgeously warm characters, flirty, fun dialogue and the perfect antidotal adventures for taking a good hard look at your life and inadvertently working out the what’s next part of proceedings.

Christmas Island‘s chief joy is that it takes the time to invest in Holly and Tor’s getting to know you time.

It’s tempting in these stories to have the happy couple come together reasonably quickly because who doesn’t adore the fizzy payoff of instant gratification love, but Normann bides her time, introducing us to Holly, Tor and the islanders, who all become a temporary found family of sorts, and letting us sink happily into their Christmas anticipatory world which, quite apart from its remote and unusual quiet setting, feels magically removed from the everyday.

Granted, it is the everyday of the people who live there, for the most part in bucolic contentment – though Normann is quick not to make them into Stepford Wives‘ cardboard cutouts of bliss; these are real people with warmth and humanity who happen to love their set-apart lifestyle out in the oceanic middle of nowhere – but for Holly, and Tor, this is different, away from the normal and restorative, and in such a setting, they can’t help but be drawn to each other and to what might happen if Tor follows his instincts and leaves some Christmas gingerbread men on the doorstep of the home Holly is housesitting.

We all know he does just that, and that he and Holly find a home in each other because rom-com, but peppered with Norwegian cultural insights (and recipes since food features heavily in the story) and the inclusive warmth of island life, Christmas Island is filled with the lush promise of the new and the inviting, of finding a sense of place and home which defies what you thought it looked like, and of a season ripe with festive promise which certainly delivers for Holly and Tor which will change everything they know, for the better, going forward, taking us happily and festively, along with them for the (sleigh) ride.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for a free ecopy of the book Christmas Island by Natalie Normann. I have enjoyed both books in this duology. They provide and interesting insight into life on a Norwegian island through a clean strangers to lovers storyline.

I have to say that there are LOADS of typos in this book which is hilarious because the proof reader got a special mention in the acknowledgements!

This is a gorgeous little story, you will fall in love with the characters and the setting, and the ending will leave you with a very cozy and happy feeling. The cover is very bright and pulls you in and matches the story perfectly. I had a lot of fun reading this book! The PERFECT holiday read!!

This is the perfect Christmas getaway book! It was just what I needed, and I will definitely be checking out more books by Natalie

Lovely feel good book to read. It was a joy to read. Lovely characters. Great plot. The book was charming. Very well written. I’d definitely recommend this book lovely location. Perfect seasonal book to get you in the mood for the festive season. Beautiful location that set the scene perfectly

The bright and cheerful cover of this book just drew me in. Here is a warm seasonal read for those who want something happy. As a bonus, there are recipes too.

To start though, there are challenges. London resident and new doctor Holly (I see it’s a Christmas name) has had some professional troubles. She decides to flee to Norway where her brother lives. Of course, when she arrives, she has an encounter (with a cat) that puts her in contact with a potential partner. Will Tor and Holly get together? Readers will surely assume so but hopefully will enjoy watching them get there. The writer has a fun writing style and a sense of humor.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.

This is one of my favorite Christmassy book that I've read in a while. I loved the atmosphere, it made me feel all warm and cozy and waiting for Christmas.

I really liked the Norwegian feel of this novel. When it comes to the term "hygge", this cozy romance captured that atmosphere in setting and storytelling to a tee.

If you are in the mood for a lighthearted, cozy read that has a wintry setting with snow and Christmas villages, check this book out. This novel read a little longer than necessary and could have been pared down a little but even with that said, it was still an enjoyable read for the holiday season.

***Thank you to One More Chapter for providing me with an e-ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review***

If you want to escape to a small island full of people with big hearts and a strong sense of community, and lose yourself in a gorgeous romance, this book is for you!

A great christmas read!

This was a brilliant read and is being featured on my blog for my quick star reviews feature, which I have created on my blog so I can catch up with all the books I have read and therefore review.
See www.chellsandbooks.wordpress.com.