One Christmas Eve is a heartfelt, festive story written by Shari Low in 2023. It is a story that combines the ideas of family complications, difficult decisions, as well as exploring a love that has lasted for three lifetimes.
Shari Low is a Scottish writer who was born in Glasgow in 1967. Before she became a writer, she worked in sales, managed nightclubs, and built health clubs. Low’s first novel titled What If? was published in 2001. Since then, she has written a further 35 novels, and sold four million copies around the globe, hitting the best seller charts in many countries including the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, and Australia. Some of her notable works include such My One Month Marriage (202o) and One Last Day of Summer (2020), as well as her series including One Day With You (2023) and One Year After You (2024).
One Christmas Eve tells the story of three different female characters in three different decades. In 1968, Cathy McLean receives a surprise visit from the lost love of her life and finds herself a dilemma of choosing between the one who got away and the one who stayed. Next, in 1993, Cathy’s daughter, Helena is excited about the possibility of her boyfriend proposing, until an encounter may bring heartbreak rather than a diamond. Lastly, in 2023, a surprising discovery knocks Eve Quinn’s world off its axis. She wants the truth but will this require a Christmas miracle?
This story is perfect for Christmas. The festive season is one of the most important themes of the novel as well as the theme of family as seen with how Low chooses to have the three main female characters as three generations of the same family – grandmother Cathy, mother Helena and daughter Eve. The fact that she chooses to use this format shows how family is seen to be important within this novel, especially as Christmas is supposed to be a time for celebrating together with your family.
Low seems to keep to her usual format where the story takes place on one day with the parts of the book being different time periods during a day, like how she opens the book between the hours of 8am and 10am. However, the only difference is that the narrative takes place on the same day – Christmas Eve – but in different decades, different years, different generations of a family. I also love how she sticks to her usual format of giving each of the main characters a chapter alternating between the three – for example she starts the book from Eve’s point of view in Chapter 1, before moving to her mother Helena in Chapter 2 and then grandmother Cathy gets Chapter 3. This process repeats throughout the book until the final part of the novel between midnight and 2am, when all of the women’s perspectives are told in 2023, and all three generations of this family’s story correlate together before Low’s epilogue jumps forward one year later to Christmas Eve 2024.
I love how this novel has a focus on family and the discovery of family secrets rather than just being a holiday romance novel. I love how the novel has a happy ending where each character has found harmony within themselves as well as in love. Shari Low is a truly talented writer. She provides a realistic story and makes you feel so many emotions.
This has to be the best contemporary Christmas novel I have ever read because the festive theme relates to ideas of family, and specifically three generations of the same family, reflecting on their bonds under the landscape of the festive scene.
