My enormous thanks to Kate Shepherd for sending me a copy of The Gingerbread Christmas Village by Kiley Dunbar way back in August. I’m delighted finally to share my review today.

Published by Hera, The Gingerbread Christmas Village is available for purchase through the links here.

The Gingerbread Christmas Village

Everyone deserves a Christmas treat…

The annual Wheaton gingerbread exhibit (a model village made of gingerbread) and grotto has been an important part of the sleepy Cotswold hamlet’s Christmas celebrations for decades.

For years the gingerbread exhibition drew visitors from across the region and each year the model town grew more elaborate and ambitious but recently, interest has been dwindling. The gingerbread grotto needs to be rehomed or close forever.

Sixty-four-year-old Margi, the event’s founder, has had enough of village life (and its total lack of eligible men) and is planning to sell up and head to Birmingham to live closer to her niece.

She has lost her spark and her Christmas spirit and decides this will be her last gingerbread village, but despairs when she finds her only support is her old friend, Izzy, her niece Lucy from Birmingham, and Fern, the shy young farmer’s daughter. Oh, and Patrick, the gorgeous, reliable school caretaker.

As if this wasn’t enough, Lucy is determined to get her out dating again and persuades her to try some online dating apps but Margi’s had her heart broken too many times and wonders if she has just missed her chance.

Can they save the Gingerbread Grotto and can Margi get her old spark and her Christmas spirit back?

My Review of The Gingerbread Christmas Village

Margi has lost her Christmas spirit.

What a lovely, lovely Christmas story. I had expected a heart-warming book but had reckoned without Kiley Dunbar’s cinematic style that creates the Cotswold setting of Wheaton so evocatively. The village is brilliantly depicted so that it is as if the reader is walking the streets of Wheaton, but descriptions never detract from the glorious storytelling so that The Gingerbread Christmas Village is a total joy to read. 

The plot is so entertaining, partly because much of it is highly relatable making the reader feel as if the action could be true. Similarly, it is Margi’s conversational tone that makes the reader feel included, as if an old and much loved friend is chatting to them. I felt as if I’d known and loved her for years.

And this familiarity is at the heart of the novel’s success. What a total joy to discover a woman in her mid sixties who is central to the action and not a mere add on to cater for the more mature reader. She may have lost some of her Christmas spirit at the start of the story, she may be stubborn and too concerned with what others think of her, but she is vivid, real and strong, making her attractive and engaging. It is impossible to read about her, understand her innermost thoughts and witness her actions without wanting to shake her, to cheer her and to wish for the most perfect ending for her. 

Indeed, I found all the characters completely real, warm and engaging. I was half in love with Patrick from the moment I met him and I thought Fern was a wonderful counterbalance to Margi. At the younger end of the age spectrum she illustrates just how we shouldn’t judge others by initial appearances.

And, aside from a hugely entertaining (and, at times, surprisingly emotional) narrative I think it is the themes that make The Gingerbread Christmas Village such an uplifting and enjoyable read. There’s a real sense of community – with a full spectrum of local issues from business rivalry and historic grudges to the use of social media and local planning that could easily happen in any rural village. But the strongest and most affecting theme of all here is Kiley Dunbar’s wonderful exploration of love. She pitches it to perfection, making The Gingerbread Christmas Village the kind of book that makes you feel warm, happy and determined – like Margi –  to live your best life.

I thought The Gingerbread Christmas Village was simply lovely. It made me feel some of that magic of Christmas from when I was a child and it is a total tonic of a book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

About Kiley Dunbar

Dr Kiley Dunbar is a Scot living over the border in Northern England where she teaches English and creative writing, devours romance novels, fusses over Amos the Bedlington Terrier, and loves two little Dunbars. She thinks making imaginary people find happiness and fall in hopelessly in love has to be the best job in the world.

For further information, visit Kiley’s website, and find her on Facebook and Instagram.