Christmas is coming, a time to spend with family and friends, good food and drinks. Although this year is slightly different and not all of us can be with loved ones. I had planned prior to COVID-19, to fly home and spend the festive season with family. With the risks involved I have decided against it.

Instead, I am making up for this year in other ways. Visiting the local, beautifully decorated malls and carrying on familiar traditions like making home-made mince pies. I am also planning a Christmas Day menu of homemade favourite festive foods, for the family I do have around me. This year, I am busier than usual, sending out invitations to friends to celebrate the festive season with us, when they too, are also unable to travel home and be with the ones they love.

In this year’s list of recommended reads, I have included stand-alone books only, as I am well aware that with all the Christmas hype and busyness of the season, reading just one book might be a one-off, well-deserved luxury. All the books I have chosen are contemporary, heart-warming stories, with love and Christmas at the heart of each one.

This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens (2020) Two unlikely friends. One extraordinary love story

No. 20 on the Amazon Chart this week

4.4/5 stars on Amazon

4.05/5 stars on Goodreads

Just the title alone screams perfect Christmas read. I haven’t even read the book and I am already swooning. It is about two people who are born on New Year’s Eve, one minute apart in the same hospital. However, everything is not as perfect as it seems and when they randomly meet again, the past and present collide.  

Finding Love at the Christmas Market by Jo Thomas (2020) Will her Christmas wish come true?

4.15/ 5 stars on Amazon

4.12/5 stars on Goodreads

This book sounds like a lot of fun: a Christmas market, a bus load of pensioners and two rivals vying for single mum Connie’s affection, what possibly could go wrong or perhaps right?

The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss (2020) One woman. Twelve Mr. Rights. What could go wrong?

4.5/5 stars on Amazon

3.8/5 stars on Goodreads

Another book that should be a fun read. Thirty-four-year old, single, Kate Turner is signed up to a dating agency by her best friend. The twist? The agency promises to help her find love before Christmas, with twelve dates with twelve men, one is bound to be Mr Right, right?

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Milly Johnson (2020) A Christmas like no other – so they made it special.

4.8/5 stars on Amazon

4.6/5 stars on Goodreads

A heart-warming story about six people forced to take shelter in a pub, deep in the Yorkshire Moors due to heavy snow. One happy couple, another couple about to be divorced, and a PA and her boss. What will happen when they are forced to spend time together, with no way to escape till the snow ends?

And then, something slightly less Christmassy…

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2020) One library. Infinite lives.

Winner of the best fiction book of 2020 on Goodreads

No. 14 on the Amazon Chart this week

4.6/5 stars on Amazon

4.25/5 on Goodreads

 I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I love Matt Haig’s fantastic story telling. Especially, the way he can tell a story with profound thought provoking truths, entwined in a thoroughly enjoyable work of fiction. This story is about a girl called Nora who has had enough of living. When she decides to die, she finds herself in a library. A library full of possible lives, that let her redo her own life over and over again. By doing this she addresses her regrets in her current life and is offered the possibility of finding a life worthy to live.

Matt is a master story-teller. I have read one other book by him: How To Be A Cat. This story has to be my number 1 children’s book of 2020. I recommend reading it too.

Amazon Kindle informed me that I have read 37 books this year, so what is my favourite book of 2020?

Untamed by Glennon Doyle (2020) stop pleasing, start living

No. 15 on the Amazon Chart this week

4.5/5 stars on Amazon

4.12/5 stars on Goodreads

I cannot recommend this book enough.  There is so much wisdom in Glennon Doyle’s words and I have learnt so much about myself as a woman, mother, and the world I live in. It is a non-fiction book full of short antidotes from her life, which teach the reader lessons, that are thought provoking and possibly life changing. I believe this is an invaluable piece of literature for any woman living in the world today. Please click here, to read my review.