Miracle on Christmas Street: The heartwarming festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!

This was a very clever theme for a book, all the houses on Christmas Street becoming the numbers on an advent calendar and doing something social at their house for the rest of the neighbours in the street each evening during the month of December. Handy if you have 24 houses anyway! The story itself is based on this but has a lot more going on. The main character, Jess, has moved to Christmas Street for a new start and a new job, after losing her job at a very exclusive school because of an incident. She's a bit down in the dumps and has spent ages wallowing at her parents house but is now starting off again on her own. I must admit I did find her quite irritating in parts (failure to return a friend's multiple texts/calls and stuffing a letter in a drawer because she didn't want to know what was in it/failure to take the 'sold' sign down on her house in case she changed her mind), she really needed to stop avoiding issues she didn't want to deal with. But the advent calendar social gatherings force her to join in and she makes friends with her neighbours, especially with Drea who gives her no choice but to be her friend, just the sort of forceful personality she needed to drag her back into living her life again and stop feeling so sorry for herself. There is also the old, grumpy Mr Winters at No.24 who everyone avoids, but somehow through circumstances Jess finds herself getting involved with, even though he doesn't want anything to do with her at first. I really liked the group of characters, especially the forceful Drea and the flamboyant florists Kai & Rex, and definitely warmed to Mr Winters as the story went on. It was really lovely to see the neighbours pulling together to help each other out when disaster strikes. A really enjoyable book with a lovely Christmassy feel.