Marian's Christmas Wish - Carla Kelly

A VOW NOT TO LOVE
Miss Marian Wynswich had not been raised to be a proper young lady. Instead she had been educated to be as good as any man in everything from reading Greek to playing chess.
Thus it was with dismay that she saw what falling in love could do to the most sensible of females, as she watched her sister Ariadne turn giddy when a gentleman captured her heart. Never, Marian vowed, would she ever commit that feminine folly.
Then the dashing Lord Gilbert Ingraham came to pay a Christmas visit. And the question was not only if this worldly lord would make Marian break her vow...it was also if this man who could have any woman he wanted would also break her heart....

My first entry in the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge is this traditional regency by Carla Kelly. I know the author is a loved one for many of my blogging friends and due to their recommendations I have read several. I enjoyed some more than others but Kelly is definitely an author I plan to keep reading. I have been curious about Marian's Christmas Wish ever since hearing about it and I'm glad that I finally had the opportunity to read it.

Marian in a young girl - almost seventeen - who is planning a wonderful Christmas with her family despite the fact that their financial situation is not the best. In fact her older brother is coming home with a rich suitor for her older sister, even though she is in love with the local vicar. But her brother also brings another guest - Lord Ingraham - and although everyone else, with the exception of her younger brother, scolds Marian for her less than genteel ways he seems charmed by her attitudes.

I was a bit worried when I started this story and realised that it was the funny elements that supported it, it is a farce. Humour is a very particular thing and I often have trouble enjoying what other people think it's funny. And I did have some problems with this one because of that, that and the fact that MariN ctually acts like sixteen year old and I don't usually go for teenager heroines. To add to it I thought she felt a bit too at ease with Lord Ingraham from the very start and that there was a big age difference between them that showed in the way they dealt with each other.

But once I overcome those problems, which I did because this a very nicely written story, I appreciated the warmth of feelings between Marian and her family, the friendship that develops between Marian and Ingraham despite their age gap, the Christmas traditions that include making a whish while stirring the Christmas pudding and the over the top behaviour of Ariadne's beau.

To be honest I think I would have enjoyed more without the "adventure" at the end of the book and what leads to it. I was quite happy with the cosiness we had in the first half of the story and was sorry when we lost that. Even so it was a nice Holiday read!

Grade: 3.5/5

This counts for the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge