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Michele Ashman Bell grew up in St. George, Utah. In fourth grade her
teacher wrote on her report card that she had a tendency to daydream
and would probably do well with creative writing. Her love for books
and learning about people and places has helped her make her teacher's
prediction come true. Michele is the author of many books and Christmas stories. She is married and is the mother of four children,
and is a grandma of five granddaughters and three grandsons. Aside from supporting her children in all of their many activities, she has taught fitness classes for over thirty years and currently teaches Zumba. She loves to travel and do research for her books and her favorite food is chocolate and cinnamon bears, preferably together.
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
A Magical Victorian Christmas by Michele Ashman Bell is a historical holiday romance novel about a young woman named Clara, and a Christmas that isn't turning out to be very merry at her North England home in York. As with most women in the Victorian era, Clara's sex dictates the narrow gender role she is meant to fill and her social position makes a proposal from a well-connected and wealthy Lord-Lieutenant impossible for her father to refuse. She is the breadwinner but he is still the head of household, and his own future comfort is only assured if he can hitch his wagon to Clara's shooting star. A handsome and talented German craftsman named Erik catches Clara's eye and a bond begins to form, but the situation is rattled by her obligations to her father and Erik's own obligations to his, even after a catastrophic event that initially appears to smooth a path in the aftermath of an entire community's heartbreak.
A Magical Victorian Christmas is a simple and relatively quick read with period details that Michele Ashman Bell has clearly researched. The setting is morally grounded and Bell zooms in on the birth of Christmas traditions that we recognize as normal today through the eyes of the Victorians, who are credited with transforming what was little more than a feast day into a fully-fledged season of revelry. The religious elements are heavy in the narrative but would not have been uncommon for the time, and I found the trinity of men who were really in control of Clara's life to be eerily similar to the Christian trinity that controlled all aspects of the era. Here though we have Clara's father, someone else's son, and a Lord who thought himself holier than all of thou. A massive plot twist halfway through the book softens some of the predictability of Clara's, Lord-Lieutenant Bradford's, and Erik‘s character arcs. That said, as far as cozy Christmas reads go, this is a rather nice one and very easy to recommend.
