By Lena McMillan, Family Support Development Officer
December’s book choice for our group was ‘Comfort and Joy’ by Kristin Hannah.
Hailed as a modern-day fairytale, this is the story of Joy, a woman facing Christmas alone, after being betrayed by the two people she loved most in the world. Newly divorced and facing the holiday season alone for the first time, Joy decides to buy a plane ticket and escape somewhere new, without telling anyone.
A dramatic detour takes her to another place altogether, where she meets a young boy called Bobby and his dad, Daniel. Bobby is facing his first Christmas without his mum, who has died, and Daniel is finding single parenting difficult, not least because he and Bobby’s mum had been separated and he’d previously lived apart from his son.
What unfolds is the story of these lives coming together at Christmastime with a plot twist that throws all you think you know about what’s happening up in the air…
Our Book Group gave this book a rating of 5.2 out of 10 – not the highest scored read for us, yet a great discussion followed about many different aspects of the book.
A couple of readers were hooked in the first few chapters about the relationships between Joy, her ex-husband Thom and her sister Stacey and all that happened between them – readers said they were interested to see how this storyline would develop but instead the book went in another direction with different characters.
Everyone agreed the book was a quick, easy read that was well written and well structured. However, the words ‘ridiculous’ and ‘nonsense’ featured in our chat, and we discussed the magical realism of the book. This was not a huge hit with the group, nor the ‘Hallmark’ style of storytelling.
We discussed Joy’s feelings at the start of the book, identifying her sense of helplessness, loss and devastation, in the aftermath of her divorce. We explored her reasons for wanting to escape and talked about the relationship she built up with Bobby: two lost souls seeking family connection.
The theme of forgiveness came through in our conversation, as well as the Christian themes running throughout the book. This led to us chatting about whether we ourselves would be forgiving in Joy’s situation – this divided the group a bit, with some talking about the importance of forgiveness to be able to let go and move on and others saying they’d want to hang on to their anger a bit longer.
Most readers hadn’t seen or anticipated the plot twist – once it is revealed, people started to make more sense of what was happening and felt it was less ‘ridiculous’ or full of ‘nonsense’ at this point – one reader described this as ‘the clever bit – it all makes sense in the end.’
Some quotes from our readers:
‘From the first few chapters, I thought it would be a real rollercoaster, but it petered out. I didn’t feel any connection with the characters and through the situation between Joy and her sister was too easily resolved.’