A Winter To Remember by Roisin Meaney

 First Published: 2023

RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!

This book starts on Christmas Day, and Emily, who owns a restaurant, wakes up early and walks to her restaurant because she is having Christmas lunch there. Yet, there is an air of melacholy  and she fears that some of her guests won't appear.

The book jumps back in time, and through the narration we discover the characters and events that had led to that Christmas Day. Emily is in a relationship with Bill, and they are caring for Pip,  Bill's grandson. Bill's daughter, Christine, got into drugs and when she had the baby, she ran away. Emily loves Pip as if she were her own.

Astrid was an old lady that was friends to Emily and Bill, and also Heather, Emily's friend. When she dies, the lawyer tells them that Astrid has left her cottage to little Pip, and the three of them have to take care of it until Pip is 21. She has also left them a thousand euro each. With the money Bill wants to try to find Christine, and he pay for a classified ad. Christine, who has been in rehab, is told about the ad, and she contacts her father. Bill is happy, but Emily is not so pleased as she is afraid that Christine will want Pip back. Bill thinks that Emily can stay at the cottage and he will pay the rent, and then Heather gives her a job cleaning her house. Little by little Christine gets to know her son more and more, and then she decides to get him back, which breaks Emily's heart.

Emily and Bill break because she tells him that she wants to have children, and Bill says that he is not ready to go through what she went with Christine again. So they break up despit the love they feel.

Heather, Emily's friend, is married to Shane and their blended family. Emily has a daughter, Bill two boys, and then they had a baby girl some months ago. Heather thinks that she is going off Shane, and wonders if their story will have to finish. Her crowded home becomes even more jampacked when her mother tells her that she is getting divorced from Heather's father and wants to stay with her in the meantime.

Heather then is contacted by her eldest daughter's father, who did a runner when she was pregnant. She is curious and goes as far as meeting him, but she realises that he doesn't deserve her attention. Then she discovers that he contacted her because she wanted her to get into some pyramid scheme. Heather talks to Shane and they seem to make up.

Christine has an almost relapse when a boy who she started a relationship with in rehab dies after he takes something. Christine calls her dealer, but thankfully, Heather intercepts him and sends him away. Christine is very sad, and Heather makes her see that she is strong enough to survive this. Bill comes to her daughter when she calls him, and she wants to know why she and Emily broke up. When he tells her, she is upset that he has left the woman he loves because of her. She says that she will make sure that the child he has in the future will keep away from drugs. Then Bill goes to see Emily and they make up.

The Christmas lunch is much better than Emily bargained for, and Bill is there as well as Christine, Pip, Heather and her large family, and her tenants, Lil and Tom. Lil and Tom went through a rough patch when Lil's confidence was shaken. She knows that Tom left his ex-finacée because he found her and his father in bed together. Vivienne came to see her because she wanted her to persuade Tom to make up with his father. Otherwise, Vivienne wouldn't have a chance to enter a relationship with him. Tom reluctantly agrees to see his father, and the man tells him that Vivienne doesns't mean anything to him, and it was a mistake. Tom is even angrier because he realised his father ruined his relationship when it meant nothing to him. On the way back Lil thinks that this is the end for them because it is clear that Tom is in love with Vivienne. When she expresses her fears, he tells her that she is wrong, and he loves her more than anybody in his life. Then they decide to marry the next week in her gran's house. 

This was a sweet story, which I enjoyed.