It’s A Wonderful Life By Julia Williams

[amazon_link id=”1847563600″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’It’s A Wonderful Life’ is the latest book by Julia Williams.

This Christmas, be careful what you wish for. Christmas with the family. Cosy, relaxing…and a total nightmare?Driving home for Christmas, Beth has everything she wants. The kids and the house, the career and the husband. So why is it that when the New Year comes, she can’t stop thinking about her old college boyfriend? Beth’s sister Lou has just been dumped…again. Single and childless, she can’t help but be jealous of her sibling’s success. But is the grass really always greener?

I’ve had the delight of reading some great Christmas books over the last couple of weeks and I have to say that ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ is a truly warm story.

The story is seen primarily in the first person of Beth King, a successful children’s author who’s suddenly struggling with her latest book and the once stable family that she was proud to be part is in chaos. After looking up to parents for achieving 42 years of marriage, her world falls apart when her father announces he’s having an affair and leaves her mother for another woman. Heartbroken, Beth tries to carry on with her book, but her life is filled with so many distractions, a broken marriage, rebellious children and a past love that’s it’s hard to put her little angel on the right road.

The story is also written in the third person for Beth’s sister Lou and Beth’s husband Daniel. Lou is struggling with her life, harbouring a secret from her family, she feels a failure to her parents and siblings for not being married and wants nothing more than to be loved meanwhile Daniel never got over his father leaving him as a child and when his father reappears wanting to make amends, Daniel finds it hard to move on causing conflict in the family.

The story starts at Christmas and flows on through the year to the following year and shows the progress the family has made from being a family that lived for Christmas to a now broken unit. It follows the ups and downs of the family when people are truly tested.

The many perspectives of the story make for insightful and entertaining reading as various members of the family deal with the sudden shift in the dynamics.

The story is sweetly written and flows at a warm pace that is both tender and humorous and with the cast of fun and vibrant characters the story is a lovely read. Also, the inclusion of extracts from Beth’s children’s book really does make for cute reading.

A pleasurable story about the importance of family and coming together, ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ is an enchanting tale from one of Avon’s best loved authors.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”1847563600″ target=”_blank” ]It’s a Wonderful Life from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.