Shakespeare's Christmas

Don't be misled by the title, "Shakespeare's Christmas" is is not a "Christmas Special" where we get to see the people of the small town of Shakespeare acting as if they were in a remake of "It's A Wonderful Life". It is the darkest, and I think the best, book in the series so far. It's set before, not at Christmas and most of it takes place outside of Shakespeare.

The mystery in "Shakespeare's Christmas" is not a polite "whodunnit" murder under the mistletoe, but the death of a young mother, knifed and left to bleed out in the snow, and the search for a monster who preys on children while masquerading as a family friend. It has enough twist and turns to keep you guessing and enough evil to evoke rage in the reader.

As with the first two show more books, the thing I enjoyed most was the continuing development of Lily Bard. It's clear to me now that the five books in the series track Lily's evolution from someone who has isolated herself so that she can cope quietly with the task of staying alive from day-to-day, to someone who has taken the risk of creating a life that she values with people that she loves, even though she is always afraid of the vulnerability to loss and grief that this could produce.

In "Shakespeare's Christmas", Lily has reluctantly come back to her home town to attend her younger sister's wedding. She knows that she will have to put on her company manners for the wedding showers and rehearsal dinners but what worries her are not the formal niceties but the need to show herself to the family and friends that she walked away from, after her rape and mutilation, when she could no longer live with their pity or their pain.

There are no soft edges here, no Hallmark Moments, instead we get an honest exploration of how Lily copes with being back with people she loves but who she finds it hard to live with, not just because they grieve for who she was but because she no longer wants to be that person.

In her mind there is the old Lily from before the rape and the new Lily she is now: someone solitary, someone vigilant, someone strong enough to protect herself, someone who's old life has been stolen from her, someone who can no longer believe that other people are fundamentally good.

Lily struggles to connect her new self to her family and her friends. One of the things that helps her with this is her encounters with children. Lily believes that she does not understand children, yet the reader sees that her honesty, her directness and her strength mean that she succeeds in winning their trust and their admiration. Like at least some of the children around her, Lily believes in the monster beneath the bed; she believes that safety is an illusion; that vigilance and strength are necessary to survival and that men are willing to use violence to get what they want.

What Lily learns from the children is that she has not become a cold, distant monster; she has become a dragon-slayer.

As events unfold, Lily also learns that part of her strength now comes from being with Jack. Typically for Lily, while she knows this to be true and suspects it to be good, she worries that it will make her vulnerable.

There is evil in this book. An evil made worse because, as Lily and Jack try to search out its source, they find too many potential candidates too close to home. There is also love in this book. As Lily does what she needs to do to make those around her safe, she finally comes to understand that she can be the new Lily, strong, honest, and wary and still be loved as a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a one-time lover, and an old friend.

The book ends with Lily going back to Shakespeare for Christmas. It is her home now. It contains the things in her life that she most wants to celebrate.

After finishing the book, I decided that to read the rest of the series back to back. I'll keep you posted on my impressions. show less

Lily Bard is a house cleaner in Shakespeare, Arkansas, who is determined not to be defined by her past as the victim of a violent crime. For that reason, she has avoided visits to her family and her hometown for many years. Lily's sister Varena has planned a Christmas wedding that will finally bring Lily back to Bartley. During some of the pre-wedding activities, Lily and Varena discover the bodies of the town doctor and his nurse in the office where they had been beaten to death. Then Lily's private eye boyfriend shows up to see Lily and meet the family, but that's not the only reason he's in town. He's been hired to look for a girl who was kidnapped as an infant eight years earlier – and Varena's fiance, a widower, has an 8-year-old show more daughter. Lily realizes that she must help Jack solve his case before her sister's wedding.

This book is darker than most cozies, but it still retains some of the small town charm characteristic of many cozy series. I liked Lily. She's not one of those “too stupid to live” characters that populate so many cozies. She isn't impulsive; she is smart, strong, thoughtful, and aware of the risks she undertakes. The reader, Julia Gibson, seems perfect for Lily's voice. I picked this one up because I was looking for an audiobook with a Christmas setting. Now I will be looking for the rest of the books in this series. show less

Shakespeare's Christmas
4 Stars

Returning home for her sister’s wedding, Lily is dreading the inevitable confrontation with the harsh memories of her past. All this takes a back seat, however, when Lily finds herself enmeshed in a new mystery as her boyfriend, private investigator Jack Leeds, arrives with the troubling news that Lily's soon to be brother-in-law may be a kidnapper.

While Lily is definitely not the most affable of heroines and some readers may find her directness curt and discourteous, to me she is refreshing, original and admirable. The insights into her life immediately following the attack and the reactions of her friends and family at the time, provide additional depths to her character and reinforce her amazing show more strength of will and resilience.

Jack and Lily’s romance is going strong and there are several entertaining scenes with the two of them trying to define their relationship and its future direction. Jack can charm the pants off anyone and the reactions of the various Bard family members to his presence are priceless.

The mystery involves a killer’s attempts to cover up a kidnapping and once again the reader follows Lily as she uncovers the clues and confronts the culprit. The actual investigation is rather slow going as the case builds against several likely suspects, but the climax is exciting and the resolution satisfying.

Although the mystery is solved and the villain is apprehended, Lily’s departure from Bartley is somewhat abrupt and there are a couple of loose ends remaining, such as What happened to Jane Osborne? and Lily’s family’s reactions to events.

In terms of the audiobook, Julia Gibson’s narration is enjoyable although there are still lengthy gaps between sections that can be distracting.

In sum, Lily has become one of my favorite heroines and the more I read of this series, the better I like it. Looking forward to the next installment. show less

I've gotten very attached to Lily Bard. It was interesting this time around to see her outside of the Shakespeare setting and interacting with her family. Can't say I'm very fond of her new bro-in-law after their last conversation. What a tool. And after she cleaned his house (albeit with ulterior motives) for him too. I like how Lily, even though there seems to be a murder every time she turns around, has gradually started to enjoy life again. She's beginning to trust people, she's making friends and she's coming to think of Shakespeare as home.

I think the cute cover art on some of the editions gives the wrong impression, though. These are not cozy mysteries. Harris doesn't shy away from disturbing subject matter, and this book is no show more exception. But she doesn't revel in it either.

I don't think I've ever read so many mysteries in such a short period of time. On to the next! show less

Cleaning lady and karate expert Lily Bard returns home for her sister's Christmas wedding. She becomes caught up in an unsolved four-year-old kidnapping when she discovers that her new brother-in-law's daughter bears a striking resemblance to the missing child.

Lily is an interesting character as she is prickly and stand-offish to other people due to her past trauma. Returning to her hometown really brings that out but she still helps her PI boyfriend investigate as she wants to know if her sister is about to make a mistake. Lily made the story more interesting as she is unpredictable at times. I enjoyed it.

Lily Bard, 31, now lives in Shakespeare, Arkansas, having fled to this sleepy town in search of solace and anonymity after a brutal rape four years earlier. Her family still acts awkwardly around her, so she dreads returning to Bartley for her sister Varena’s Christmas wedding.

As it turns out, an eight-year-old cold case of a missing girl, Summer Dawn Macklesby, gets hot again, and the suspects are all in Bartley. Lily’s boyfriend, Jack Leeds, who is a private investigator, ends up in Bartley working on the case, and the two of them join forces since one of the suspects is Varena’s husband-to-be Dill.

As dead bodies start accumulating in Bartley, Lily and Jack have to act quickly to solve the crimes and either absolve or convict show more Dill before Varena commits to him for life.

Evaluation: There was a bit too much about the wedding planning in this third book of the Lily Bard series for my liking. On the other hand, part of Harris’s charm is her ability to evoke the details of life in a small town and to provide a realistic picture of interfamilial relationships. It isn’t the best of the series, but is nevertheless entertaining, and Lily and Jack have great couple dynamics. show less

As much as I've enjoyed the setting of Shakespeare, Arkansas, for the rest of this series, I did enjoy the change of scenery as protagonist Lily Bard returned to her small hometown of Bartley for her sister's wedding. Since I've just recently read the first book in this series (backtracking a bit), I liked learning more about Lily's background and family.

At the risk of sounding like I'm blaming the victim, Lily does seem to get in a lot of situations where she needs to use her karate skills, but since I've been thinking about taking up a martial art, it continues to intrigue me to see this side of her. Add to the mix that she's a house cleaner by trade, she continues to be an interesting and well-rounded character.

Now that I've read show more all of the books in the Lily Bard series, I'm hoping that Charlaine Harris will write another! show less