Christmas on the Island Read online

  Also, this year, my dear, dear friend Susan’s nephew, Luke Hoyer, was killed, aged fifteen, in the Parkland shooting in Florida. Thanks and respect to his parents, Tom and Gena, for letting him tread, very briefly, through the pages of this book.

  About the Author

  JENNY COLGAN is the author of numerous bestselling novels, including The Little Shop of Happy Ever After and Summer at the Little Beach Street Bakery, which are also published by Sphere. Meet Me at the Cupcake Café won the 2012 Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance and was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller, as was Welcome to Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop of Dreams, which won the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2013. Jenny was born in Scotland and has lived in London, the Netherlands, the US and France. She eventually settled on the wettest of all of these places, and currently lives just north of Edinburgh with her husband Andrew, her dog and her three children: Wallace, who is twelve and likes pretending to be nineteen and not knowing what this embarrassing ‘family’ thing is that keeps following him about; Michael-Francis, who is ten and likes making new friends on aeroplanes; and Delphine, who is eight and is mostly raccoon as far as we can tell so far.

  Things Jenny likes include: cakes; far too much Doctor Who; wearing Converse trainers every day so her feet are now just gigantic big flat pans; baths only slightly cooler than the surface of the sun; and very, very long books, the longer the better. For more about Jenny, visit her website and her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter @jennycolgan.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Praise for Jenny Colgan

  ‘This is the perfect book to curl up with . . . the mouthwatering descriptions of baked goods will make it hard to stave off the Christmas pounds’

  —Express

  ‘A good-hearted and humorous slice of Cornish life’

  —Sunday Mirror

  ‘If you like your Yuletide tales with real characters and plenty of fun, this is the one for you’

  —Heat

  ‘A cracker . . . the one must-read this festive season’

  —Sun

  ‘Fast-paced, funny, poignant and well observed’

  —Daily Mail

  ‘Sweeter than a bag of jelly beans . . . had us eating up every page’

  —Cosmopolitan

  ‘As fresh and invigorating as a breath of sea air’

  —S Magazine

  ‘A perfect beach read’

  —Good Housekeeping

  ‘A quirky tale of love, work and the meaning of life’

  —Company

  ‘A smart, witty love story’

  —Observer

  ‘Full of laugh-out-loud observations . . . utterly unputdownable’

  —Woman

  ‘A chick-lit writer with a difference . . . never scared to try something different, Colgan always pulls it off’

  —Image

  ‘A Colgan novel is like listening to your best pal, souped up on vino, spilling the latest gossip – entertaining, dramatic and frequently hilarious’

  —Daily Record

  ‘An entertaining read’

  —Sunday Express

  ‘Part-chick lit, part-food porn . . . this is full on fun for foodies’

  —Bella

  Also by Jenny Colgan

  The Endless Beach

  Amanda’s Wedding

  My Very ’90s Romance

  Looking for Andrew McCarthy

  Working Wonders

  Do You Remember the First Time?

  Where Have All the Boys Gone?

  West End Girls

  Operation Sunshine

  Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend

  The Good, the Bad and the Dumped

  Meet Me at the Cupcake Café

  Christmas at the Cupcake Café

  Welcome to Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop of Dreams

  Christmas at Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop

  The Christmas Surprise

  The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris

  Little Beach Street Bakery

  Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery

  The Little Shop of Happy Ever After

  Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery

  The Bookshop on the Corner

  The Café by the Sea

  A Very Distant Shore

  By Jenny T. Colgan

  Resistance Is Futile

  Spandex and the City

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CHRISTMAS ON THE ISLAND. Copyright © 2018 by Jenny Colgan. Map copyright © 2017 by The Flying Fish Studios. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom under the title An Island Christmas by Little, Brown Book Group in 2018.

  Cover design by Lex Maudlin

  Cover photographs © KavalenkavaVolha/iStock/Getty Images (main image); © Suai Suai/Shutterstock (lights); © Crepesoles/Shutterstock (lights); © chuckchee/Shutterstock (lights)

  Digital Edition OCTOBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-285017-1

  Version 09192018

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285007-2

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