A Wish for Winter by Viola Shipman
Christmas, Holiday, 416 pages
Published November 15, 2022 by Graydon House
With echoes of classic Hollywood love stories like Serendipity and An Affair to Remember, Viola Shipman’s latest winter charmer following the USA Today bestseller The Secret of Snow is sure to tug on heartstrings and delight readers who love books about books, missed connections and the magic of Christmas.
Despite losing her parents in a tragic accident just before her fourteenth Christmas, Susan Norcross has had it better than most, with loving grandparents to raise her and a gang of quirky, devoted friends to support her. Now a successful bookstore owner in a tight-knit Michigan lakeside community, Susan is facing down forty—the same age as her mother when she died—and she can’t help but see everything she hasn’t achieved, including finding a love match of her own.
To add to the pressure, everyone in her small town believes it’s Susan’s destiny to meet and marry a man dressed as Santa, just like her mother and grandmother before her. So it seems cosmically unfair that the man she makes an instant connection with at an annual Santa Run is lost in the crowd before she can get his name.
What follows is Susan and her friends’ hilarious and heartwarming search for the mystery Santa—covering twelve months of social media snafus, authors behaving badly and dating fails—as well as a poignant look at family, friendship and what defines a well-lived and well-loved life.
My thoughts about A Wish for Winter ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First lines—"Every family has a holiday tradition."
I just love reading Christmas stories. And I absolutely love Viola Shipman's books. Put the two together and I found myself in heaven!
Susan Norcross lost both of her parents at an early age and was raised by her grandparents. She has big expectations for love as both her mom and her grandma found the loves of their lives while he was wearing a Santa hat. Susan is just waiting for her Santa to appear, but is it too late for her romantic meet-up?
Her good friends gather around her to try to make it happen. That's when the fun begins. As everyone is on the quest to find that mysterious Santa, Susan learns a lot about herself, her friends and family, and what real love means.
I loved A Wish for Winter, as I have loved all of Shipman's stories. I know I'm in for a heartwarming, beautiful story when I start reading one of her books. This one did not disappoint. It is the perfect holiday read for the season right now. I highly recommend it if you love a feel-good Christmas story this time of year.
I received an ARC of A Wish for Winter via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion of the book.
About the author
Viola Shipman is the pen name for Wade Rouse, a popular, award-winning memoirist. Rouse chose his grandmother's name, Viola Shipman, to honor the woman whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his writing. Rouse is the author of The Summer Cottage, as well as The Charm Bracelet and The Hope Chest which have been translated into more than a dozen languages and become international bestsellers.
He lives in Saugatuck, Michigan and Palm Springs, California, and has written for People, Coastal Living, Good Housekeeping, and Taste of Home, along with other publications, and is a contributor to All Things Considered.
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