Life got the better of me earlier in the year and I wasn’t able to take on a review of Sue Moorcroft’s summer book A Summer to Remember, so it is with extra delight that I am participating in the blog tour for Sue’s latest release, Let it Snow. My thanks to Sabah Khan at Avon books for inviting me to take part.

Sue is a regular here on the blog and you can see other Linda’s Book Bag posts with her in the following links:

Discussing One Summer in Italy

An interview with Sue Moorcroft

A guest post from Sue on over-sharing and my review of The Christmas Promise

A guest post from Sue on her fantasy holiday companions

My review of Just For The Holidays

A guest post from Sue on loving a village book

My review of The Little Village Christmas

My review of A Christmas Gift

Published by Harper Collins’ imprint Avon, Let it Snow is available for purchase through the links here.

Let it Snow

This Christmas, the villagers of Middledip are off on a very Swiss adventure…

Family means everything to Lily Cortez and her sister Zinnia, and growing up in their non-conventional family unit, they and their two mums couldn’t have been closer.

So it’s a bolt out of the blue when Lily finds her father wasn’t the anonymous one-night stand she’d always believed – and is in fact the result of her mum’s reckless affair with a married man.

Confused, but determined to discover her true roots, Lily sets out to find the family she’s never known; an adventure that takes her from the frosted, thatched cottages of Middledip to the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, via a memorable romantic encounter along the way…

My Review of Let It Snow

With her marriage over, Lily is back in Middledip.

It’s such a joy to pick up a Sue Moorcroft book and know that you’re in for a treat as a reader. Let It Snow is the latest in a delightful series of books set in Middledip (with a wander off to Switzerland too) that is just perfect for a wintry afternoon, curled up in front of the fire.

Let It Snow has all the elements I’ve come to expect from this author. There’s a smashing storyline, this time with quite a dark aspect to it too, that is very satisfying. The settings are vividly drawn and transport the reader through brilliant use of the senses, so that reading Let It Snow is a surprisingly immersive experience. Music, food, scenery and so on create a landscape that is visual and multi dimensional. I especially enjoyed the aspects of the story set in Switzerland.

I love Sue Moorcroft’s skill in featuring many characters without them becoming extraneous or insubstantial. Each person in this story, Lily and Isaac especially, is a rounded and real person which makes Let It Snow feel as if the reader is observing and involved in the action and not just reading about it. With prejudice still so rife in our society, it was wonderful to have a lesbian relationship between Roma and Patsie that felt normal and natural, without being idealised or preachy. Their life is presented with its flaws and insecurities exactly like any heterosexual partnership which I found refreshing and appealing.

I thoroughly enjoyed the blossoming romance – and it’s frustrations – between Isaac and Lily. Sue Moorcroft has a deft touch at writing romantic scenes that is so realistic that the reader enjoys every moment. Through their developing relationship Sue Moorcroft provides so much more for a reader to enjoy, to ponder and to reflect upon. Our sense of identity, of loyalty, of independence are all thoroughly explored so that I wasn’t always certain quite how the narrative might resolve itself. And whilst Let It Snow is a perfect example of what might be called women’s fiction or uplit, it offers much more besides and I enjoyed it all the more because of its themes of family, work and relationships.

In Let It Snow, Sue Moorcroft has proven once again that she is a force to be reckoned with in writing this kind of fiction. I’m not normally keen on author endorsements for one another, but the quotation on the cover of Let It Snow really does sum up the book. Debbie Johnson is quite right. ‘Sue Moorcroft’s books really do have it all’ and Let It Snow is no exception.

About Sue Moorcroft

Award winning author Sue Moorcroft writes contemporary women’s fiction with occasionally unexpected themes. The Wedding Proposal, Dream a Little Dream and Is This Love? were all nominated for Readers’ Best Romantic Read Awards. Love & Freedom won the Best Romantic Read Award 2011 and Dream a Little Dream was nominated for a RoNA in 2013. Sue’s a Katie Fforde Bursary Award winner, a past vice chair of the RNA and editor of its two anthologies.

The Christmas Promise was a Kindle No.1 Best Seller and held the No.1 slot at Christmas!

Sue also writes short stories, serials, articles, writing ‘how to’ and is a creative writing tutor.

You can follow Sue on Twitter @SueMoorcroft, find her on Facebook and visit her website.

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