Published By: Harvill
Pages: 256
Released On: 25/09/2025
The air glitters with hope as the snowy village of Merrywake celebrates the Christmas season after the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars.
As the Viscount’s famous Twelfth Night Ball draws closer, many of the villagers have a story to tell – we meet a lovelorn vicar and kindly maid reunited after a misunderstanding, three sisters vying for the hand of a dastardly duke, two servants hiding a dangerous secret and a solider making his way home, unsure of the welcome he might receive. As their tales braid together, we see life and love in the village from belowstairs to high society.
Reimagining each of the traditional carol’s gifts, The Twelve Days of Christmas is a collection of festive tales filled with seasonal cheer and heart-warming characters. Will the challenges and mysteries that the Viscount’s guests encounter be resolved by the night of the ball?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Harvill for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Oh I had such high hopes for this book.
I love Christmas, I am Mrs Claus 365 days of the year, and I love Christmas books so this should have been a real winner for me. But it wasn’t.
But let’s start with the positives.
Each chapter is focussed on one of the twelve days of Christmas; the first is about a character called Mrs Partridge, then the second involves some ceramic turtle doves, and then some hens etc. I liked that link to Christmas.
The stories are linked and it was interesting to read all the characters’ individual stories and then how they worked together. The characters were all interesting, well written, and felt very real.
I was going to review each story separately but I found myself writing the same things again and again so I’ve lumped them all together.
My main issue is that this didn’t feel like a Christmas book at all. The only link, for me, is the mentions of the various items in Twelve Days of Christmas and the fact it’s set at Christmas. There was nothing, for me anyway, at the heart of the stories that made it festive.
Overall it is a perfectly acceptable collection of stories but I was disappointed. For me, the link to Christmas was tenuous. I loved this sense of community she’s managed to invoke throughout, but I didn’t get that warm, cosy feeling I was expecting or hoping for after reading some other reviews. I would say if you want an enjoyable collection of short stories to read one evening then go for it, but if you’re after an all encompassing, heartwarming, cosy festive tale, then this isn’t for you.
This was a book I’d pre-ordered, but then cancelled when I received this digital arc, with the intention of re-ordering it again after reading it. But I won’t be now and I’d have been disappointed if I had bought it sadly, which is a shame as I have enjoyed Susan’s writing in the past.
Books By Your Bedside 