Christmas With the Queen by Hazel Gaynor
Author: Hazel Gaynor
Published: 2024
Genre: Historical Fiction
Synopsis From Goodreads:
Tis the season! The Crown meets When Harry Met Sally and Bridget Jones’s Diary, in the latest heartwarming historical novel from Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, bestselling authors of Meet Me in Monaco and Three Words for Goodbye.
December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue in the tradition of her late father and grandfather’s beloved Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must move with the times, and the Queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change.
As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, two old friends—Jack Devereux and Olive Carter—find themselves reunited for the festivities. A single mother, typist at the BBC, and aspiring reporter, Olive leaps at the opportunity to cover the holiday celebration, despite self-doubts. When a chance encounter with the Queen presents an exciting opportunity, Olive begins to believe her luck might change.
Jack, a grief-stricken widowed chef originally from New Orleans, accepts a last-minute chance to cook in the royal kitchens at Sandringham. When he bumps into a long-lost friend, an old spark is reignited.
Despite personal and professional heartache, Jack and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmas seasons and they find themselves growing ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret.
Christmas Day, December 1957. As the nation eagerly awaits the Queen’s first televised Christmas speech, Olive decides to reveal the shocking truth of her secret, which threatens to tear her and Jack apart forever. Unless Christmas has one last gift to deliver…
My Take
There is a certain fascination in seeing glimpses of the personal lives of historical figures. Royalty, in particular, is so far removed from the average person’s life that in most aspects, they are viewed as “other”…as living in a world disconnected from our own. Queen Elizabeth II is such a familiar figure. Having worn the crown for so long and being the only monarch of England many of us had ever known until recently, we tend to forget about her beginning years and the massive changes that occurred while she was on the throne. So this creative glimpse into her first 5 years of rule, centered on the traditional Christmas broadcast, was absolutely fascinating. With chapters in the Queen’s own “voice” and from her perspective, it gives the reader a sense of the purpose of the Christmas broadcast: a personal welcome into her home, with warm wishes for the holiday.
The main part of the book follows two fictional characters, Jack and Olive, as their stories weave together and apart with each other and the royal household through the years, centering on Christmas and Sandringham House. While the plot lines were creatively woven together and gave you glimpses of the struggle of a single woman trying to break into reporting in England in the 1950s (or the life of a royal chef), their story seemed to drag and detract from the parts where they interacted with the royal family and from the chapters from the Queen’s perspective. The authors wanted to span the first five years of Queen Elizabeth II’s broadcasts. Because of that timeframe, it required spreading Jack and Olive’s story across five years as well, which made it slow and implausible, in my opinion.
If this book had been more focused on the Queen and her broadcasts, or her life in general during this timeframe, with less of Jack and Olive, I would have enjoyed it more thoroughly. As it is, this book is a creative but brief glimpse into the early years of her rule, spread throughout a very slow-burn second-chance fictional love story. It was interesting, but it mainly made me want to look for a well-written documentary about the early years of Queen Elizabeth II.
Language:
There is language in this book. While it is not pervasive, it is regularly sprinkled throughout, with some characters swearing more often than others. There are no instances of the F word in the book, but there are about 10 instances of taking the Lord’s name in vain in various forms along with other swear words.
Sexual Content:
There are kisses throughout the book and spoken or implied innuendo. There is also a “closed-door” instance of two characters spending the night together. One thing that surprised me was the casualness implied with sex. It is hard to believe that a single mother who had experienced severe consequences for being pregnant out of wedlock in the 1940s would refer to sex as “no big deal”. She wouldn’t talk about wanting to have some “harmless fun” with a guy who was not dependable, trustworthy, or a possible father figure for her daughter. It just did not seem to fit, especially since her experiences had demonstrated that the possible consequences were the exact opposite of “harmless.”
Drug/Alcohol Use:
Alcohol is regularly consumed throughout this book in various places and types. Characters are frequently at pubs or restaurants where alcohol is served, they have wine at dinner, after-dinner drinks and nightcaps at their homes, and there is champagne at celebrations. It is a regular part of their daily lives. Characters also smoke cigarettes, pipes, and cigars, as was common in that era.
Violence:
A character is run over by a taxi and dies.
Plot/Storytelling:
This is a plot-based storyline with minimal character development told from three different perspectives. There are also frequent flashbacks to 1945, so while the date and the character is clearly labeled at the beginning of each chapter, care must be taken to keep it straight if you get easily confused. As stated earlier, the plot line between Jack and Olive is a very slow burn, and makes the pacing drag a bit as we make our way from December 1952 to December 1957.