The Christmas Boutique

The Christmas Boutique is an Elm Creek Quilts novel. This 21 book cozy series returns after a seven year hiatus and the inside cover blurb summarizes the book as follows:

"Just weeks before Christmas, severe wintry weather damages the church hall hosting the Christmas Boutique-an annual sale of handcrafted gifts and baked goods that support the county food pantry. Determined to save the fundraiser Sylvia Bergstrom Compson offers to hold the event at Elm Creek Manor, her ancestral family estate and summertime home to Elm Creek Quilt Camp.

In the spirit of the season Sylvia and the Elm Creek Quilters begin setting up market booths in the ballroom and decking the halls with beautiful handmade holiday quilts. Each of the quilters chooses a favorite work to display, a special creation evoking memories of holidays past and dreams of Christmases yet to come. But while the Elm Creek Quilters work tirelessly to make sure the Christmas Boutique happens, it may take a holiday miracle or two to make it the smashing success they want it to be."

More than half of the writing was backstory, which means of course that there wasn't much to this plot.  The prior 3 or 4 books in the series were also predominantly backstory so I have to wonder if the author  has run out of new ideas for this series. In the interim since the last book was published the author wrote several historical fiction novels. They were OK. She excels, however, in writing cozies so I think she should consider writing another cozy series.

The characters in the series are fascinating but I think the most interesting ones were from the beginning of the series who have now passed away. The series is supposed to be about the Bergstrom family but only one member is still alive and she is not the main character.  In fact, there really isn't a main character. There is a group of women who make up the core of characters in the series.

Quilting was not as prominent in this installment of the series. I am a quilter and would have loved to have read more of the usual so-and-so selected such-and-such pattern to sew and the sentimental reasons why the selection was made.

While I have written some negative comments that does not mean that I didn't enjoy the book. I did. It was nice to get reacquainted with characters who seem like friends to me. Having a significant amount of background is not bad given that there has been 7 years since the last book in the series was published. I had forgotten much of each character's past and needed to be reminded.

4 out of 5 stars.