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The Christmas Postcards: Cosy Up With This Uplifting, Festive Romance From the Sunday Times Bestseller

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The Queen of Destination Fiction sweeps readers away on an armchair travel via postcards from a stranger! Her Christmas novel about reuniting lost souls is the book you didn’t know you needed. Dali’s surrealist take on Christmas proved a bit too avant-garde for the average card buyer, so the rest of the designs were soon pulled from store shelves.

In 1894, prominent British arts writer Gleeson White devoted an entire issue of his influential magazine, The Studio, to a study of Christmas cards. While he found the varied designs interesting, he was not impressed by the written sentiments. “It’s obvious that for the sake of their literature no collection would be worth making,” he sniffed. ( White’s comments are included as part of an online exhibit of Victorian Christmas cards from Indiana University’s Lilly Library ) There is so much to this story! It has mystery, suspense, armchair travel, edge of your seat suspense and romance all rolled into one. A learning experience for those of us without children as much a sweet reminder for those who do, Moolah’s travels are Swan’s way to take us on the journey of the parenting ‘rite of passage’ no mother wants to go through ~ the loss of a toy! Swan knows how to tap into readers’ emotions and feel the anguish both the mother and child feel. The quest to be reunited with Moolah propels the story as much as the side plot of two people also trying to recapture what they’d lost. The illustrated postcard craze, like the influenza, has spread to these islands from the Continent, where it has been raging with considerable severity. Sporadic cases have occurred in Britain. Young ladies who have escaped the philatelic infection or wearied of collecting Christmas cards, have been known to fill albums with missives of this kind received from friends abroad; but now the cards are being sold in this country, and it will be like the letting out of waters.(...)"Appreciation of the quality and the artistry of the cards grew in the late 1800s, spurred in part by competitions organized by card publishers, with cash prizes offered for the best designs. People soon collected Christmas cards like they would butterflies or coins, and the new crop each season were reviewed in newspapers, like books or films today. Nat is very unsettled in her marriage, she has everything she could want and she can't seem to pinpoint why she is unhappy. Swan deftly depicts Nat's unsettledness without making her unlikable or appear selfish. Overall, I was grabbed hook line and sinker by this book, I was a bit daunted at first because it is a chunk but I absolutely flew through it as I didn’t want to put it down. My only thing was that I wouldn’t really call this a Christmas book as I think the title and cover made me think it would be a lot more seasonal whereas in reality there were only a couple of connections. I did find a lot of this predictable and the twist wasn’t that hard to work out, it’s a nice idea and premise, a tad long and some of the plot unnecessary.

Natasha was a character that I liked from the start, the start in the forest created a fondness with me - I love the likes of Go Ape and climbing but I think I’d have rather be Tom and getting to work in the outdoors rather than freezing on the high ropes. You could tell that Natasha was fighting a lot of inner demons but that Mabel was and will always be her priority, no matter what her thoughts were saying Mabel would always come first. The Christmas Postcards is an alluring, compelling tale that sweeps you away into the life of Natasha, a young mother who, after her daughter loses her toy elephant she can’t possibly live without, begins a correspondence with the man who found it, Duffy, who seems to be on a soul-searching mission of his own and who may have actually spent a moment of time with Natasha once years before. Henry Cole’s first card was a convenient way for him to speak to his many friends and associates without having to draft long, personalized responses to each. Yet, there are also accounts of Cole selling at least some of the cards for a shilling apiece at his art gallery in London, possibly for charity. Maybe Sir Cole was not only a pioneer of the Christmas card, but prescient in his recognition of another aspect of our celebration of Christmas. In the weeks leading up to Christmas Natasha's young daughter loses her treasured toy cow, Moola, accidentally leaving her behind in a B & B in Vienna.

Everything you need for your Christmas Party

Natasha and Tom (Duffy) time was never on their side. From Natasha getting married (the less said about Rob, James whoever he is the better) to disasters up mountains. For time to finally possibly just be on their side. I loved Tom from the off he is so likeable given everything which has happened to him too. Natasha I could say grew on me. Grew on me every chapter with Tom. I could not take to Rob and there was clearly a reason for it. They didn’t have enough of the right size paper,” Piazza says. Hence, the first printing of the new Christmas stamps came in sheets of 100. The second printing was in sheets of 90. (Although they are not rare, Piazza adds, the second printing-sheets of these stamps are collectibles today). Only Moolah the cow has her own adventures to enjoy before she can return, as the person who found her is on his own life-changing trip. A big part of my problem with these books is the idea of love at First sight, of people falling in love in the space of a month (or 24 hours). It’s stupid,and I realise I hate it. Set in a snow-covered Cotswolds village, The Christmas Postcards is a cosy, escapist festive delight about distant connections from Sunday Times bestselling author of The Stolen Hours , Karen Swan.

They discovered that people didn’t have enough room to write everything they wanted to say on a post card,” says Steve Doyal, vice president of public affairs for Hallmark, “but they didn’t want to write a whole letter.” While Cole and Horsley get the credit for the first, it took several decades for the Christmas card to really catch on, both in Great Britain and the United States. Once it did, it became an integral part of our holiday celebrations—even as the definition of “the holidays” became more expansive, and now includes not just Christmas and New Year’s, but Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Winter Solstice.

The modern Christmas card industry arguably began in 1915, when a Kansas City-based fledgling postcard printing company started by Joyce Hall, later to be joined by his brothers Rollie and William, published its first holiday card. The Hall Brothers company (which, a decade later, change its name to Hallmark), soon adapted a new format for the cards—4 inches wide, 6 inches high, folded once, and inserted in an envelope. Natasha and Rob are on their way home, along with their daughter, Mabel, from a holiday in the Maldives. To break their journey they stop off in Vienna to wait for their connecting flight. Mabel leaves her beloved soft toy behind, a cow named Moolah. It is found by a man named Duffy who takes it with him on his travels as a mascot. Mabel is distraught so Natasha enlists the help of social media, culminating in Duffy sending them photographic updates of Moolah’s journey. Unknown to both of them, Natasha and Duffy have a past…. Mabel is distraught and cannot sleep without her beloved animal so Natasha begins a quest to find it. These people always seem to need therapy to deal with past trauma/abandonment issues but instead “fall in love” and it solves everything. There were a few little twists in here, a couple of which I guessed pretty early on but I didn’t see the big one happening and it took me a bit off guard as it also meant that maybe me previous predictions could be correct…

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