The Girl Who Saved Christmas ⭑⭑⭑⭑
Genre: Middle Grade
US Publication: 2017
Print: 320 pages
Audio: 5 hours 22 minutes
Confetti Rating: 4 stars
REVIEW:
If Matt Haig wrote it, I’m reading it.
If Carey Mulligan narrated it, I’m listening to it.
So a holiday tale written by Haig and narrated by Mulligan?! You better believe I smiled when my library hold came in for The Girl Who Saved Christmas. But that smile quickly faded.
If it’s a story where a small child sits at her dying parent’s bedside wishing for a Christmas miracle, I’m never going to be up for that after certain events in my family. As soon as young Amelia hoped Santa would save her mother from terminal illness, I wanted to chuck my headphones across the room.
But Haig. And Mulligan. Thus I pushed on to finish the book, and I’m glad I did. It’s a very charming middle-grade story about how when Amelia loses her hope, Santa loses his power. It’s Victorian-era England, and the likes of Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria herself make cheeky appearances that helped to bring my smile back. There are elves and trolls and famous reindeer and even a clever cat. Who could resist all that?
Whenever I listen to a middle-grade audiobook like this, I always try to put myself in the shoes of a parent with kids in the back of a minivan just trying to stay sane during a long roadtrip to Grandma’s house. The story is so engaging and the narration is done with such spirited voicing for each of the characters that the entire production won me over.
If you’re loading up the ol’ family truckster this weekend and staring down several hours of “don’t make me turn this car around” moments, be sure to download this before you go. It might just be the audiobook that saved Christmas for you.
PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:
From the bestselling author of A Boy Called Christmas comes a hilarious and heartwarming holiday tale for fans of Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that imagines the story of the first child to ever receive a Christmas present.
Amelia Wishart was the first child ever to receive a Christmas present. It was her Christmas spirit that gave Santa the extra boost of magic he needed to make his first trip around the world. But now Amelia is in trouble.
When her mother falls ill, she is sent to the workhouse to toil under cruel Mr. Creeper. For a whole year, Amelia scrubs the floors and eats watery gruel, without a whiff of kindness to keep her going. It’s not long before her hope begins to drain away.
Meanwhile, up at the North Pole, magic levels dip dangerously low as Christmas approaches, and Santa knows that something is gravely wrong. With the help of his trusty reindeer, a curious cat, and Charles Dickens, he sets out to find Amelia, the only girl who might be able to save Christmas. But first Amelia must learn to believe again…