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A Season To Remember. Sheila O'Flanagan (2010)

by O'Flanagan(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0755375157 (ISBN13: 9780755375158)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Headline Review

review 1: Rating: 2,5 / 5A book of people who have all come to a Sugar Loaf Lodge to spend their christmas in a little cosy hotel for all the different reasons. Each chapter gives an insight into a character or a family who stays there and also the owners of the hotel.It is not a bad book, but also nothing to write home about.I don't feel like recommending this book, because for me it was not anything special and i probably don't remember much about it in years time.There was a bit of added excitement with Louisa story - a ghost of a girl who died in there years earlier and the way her story was told throughout added half a point to my rating of this book. It added something special and different.I liked the writing style though and i am very likely to read more books by the writer ... moreas this was the first book i read from her. Despite this book not growing on me, I'm convinced Sheila O'Flanagan has talent to write heartfelt stories.
review 2: This light seasonal novel is easy reading although there are more mentions of Christmas than in a supermarket on December 24th.The author has a background in finance so she sets the novel in a hotel struggling to cope with the economic downturn. In one of the instalments which make up the whole, she explains how a sensible couple who saved all their lives suddenly found that all the rainy day money had been lost in a pyramid scheme (because the husband thought he'd be clever and not ask his wife's advice). Other than that the book copies Maeve Binchy's style of putting disparate people in one place and telling each story separately.The renovated Sugarloaf Hotel in the Dublin mountains is the setting and each chapter is named after a suite. The occupants then share their story with us. Why do people go to a hotel for Christmas? A luxury hotel, moreover, during a recession? Reasons given include a romantic weekend with a married man cheating on his wife and young kids - like that was ever going to work out. Some clients are avoiding domestic strife by not choosing between relatives' houses while others are just fed up with all the work and catering for a large family. And some have decided to treat themselves for perhaps the first time in their lives.What I enjoyed most was an unexpected ghost story tucked in the middle of the book. A young girl who died from an accident in the house generations before, haunts the building quite ineffectively until the hotel conversion occurs. I was not comfortable with the idea that she was using the computer when she was unable to touch anything else. But her story is quite sweet and lifts the book out of the usual.The hotel owners are naturally buoyed by having a full house over Christmas but never mention January's expected downturn.The book is full of stereotypes which was my least favourite aspect. I agree that the situations described do occur so the people are probably stereotypes for a reason. But some just seem the product of lazy thinking. We are told of, but don't meet, a couple of highly intellectual university lecturers where the husband is a Mensa member. Why aren't they both Mensa members? And why don't we meet them?The positive, can-do attitude embraced by the hotelier couple and some of their clients is however a refreshing mental image so I could recommend this read to those feeling depressed by the downturn.I would imagine the book took Ms O'Flanagan a week or two to write and I would like to see what she could produce if she really put her mind to it. less

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