Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Finished June 8

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe by Jenny Bayliss

I always enjoy this author's books, she has a nice way of drawing you in and making you care about her characters. Here the main character is Elinor (Nory) Noel, who runs a secondhand bookshop in London. She comes from a working class family, with her parents running a greenhouse. She was accepted as a scholarship student at a prestigious boarding school and made friends with a group of kids there. She has kept loosely in touch with most of them. Two of them are now getting married and have proposed a reunion in the days leading up to the wedding, at the manor house (now inn) that backs onto the school property. They aren't far from Nory's parents' home and she plans to visit them while she's there.

A few years ago, one of the friend group died, and it brought the group together in grief at the time. Several of them questioned the way their life was going, and Nory was among them. She didn't enjoy her work, and that is when she determined to open the business she runs now. She is much happier and has one close friend from the school group, Ameerah, and is also friends with her one employee, Andrew. 

Nory is looking forward to the reunion in some ways, but not so much in others. She had a night with one of the former school friends, Guy, years ago, but he hadn't told her that he was married, and neither had the friends that were aware of it. She is determined to avoid him as much as possible. On the first night there she goes out into the gardens, which she knows fairly well from childhood, to avoid him and ends up getting startled by the head gardener Isaac, who father used to head the gardens. 

As the two get to know each other, they find a lot of things in common, but there is also pressure from someone close to her against her choice, and a secret Isaac has that complicates things. 

The friends are an interesting bunch, all from wealthy backgrounds except Nory, and some of them are definitely out of touch with the real world. It's not necessarily because they don't care, but their lifestyle just hasn't exposed them to the awareness of other lives. Nory is someone who is sure of herself, but less sure of how others feel about her. A fun read.