Book Review | The Christmas Appeal

This was a book club pick for the festive season, luckily I managed to read the first book and this one before the meeting in early January.

The Christmas Appeal
Janice Hallett

This immersive holiday caper from the “modern Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times, London) follows the hilarious Fairway Players theater group as they put on a Christmas play—and solve a murder that threatens their production.

The Christmas season has arrived in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive holiday production of Jack and the Beanstalk to raise money for a new church roof. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking among the amateur theater enthusiasts with petty rivalries, a possibly asbestos-filled beanstalk, and some perennially absent players behind the scenes.

Of course, there’s also the matter of the dead body onstage. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they investigate Christmas letters, examine emails, and pore over police transcripts to identify both the victim and killer before the curtain closes on their holiday production—for good.

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Luckily I picked up the first book in the series before I read this, as I prefer to read books in order. I also don’t think I would recommend reading this without having read The Appeal first, I don’t think the dynamics of the characters will be as well understood if you don’t have the background of the previous book. Thankfully I read them close together so the characters and format were fresh in my mind.

The Christmas Appeal has the same interesting format, told through messages, emails, police reports, and other media collected by Roderick Tanner who is now retired but still keeping Femi and Charlotte busy. The Fairway Players are front and centre once again but this time as the Haywards are no longer in the picture it is Sarah-Jane and Celia having all the problems.

This is the funniest part of the book, that Sarah-Jane will send out an update and then Celia will send her update not so subtly criticising and undermining. The reactions to it from Sarah-Jane’s family and how contentious it all seems between them as they try to outdo and sabotage each other were very amusing.

This one didn’t have quite so much of a mystery to it, there is a body that turns up but it’s halfway through the book and in amongst a lot of other things happening, so it felt resolved very quickly and not perhaps as important as some of the other things in the story. I think if you hadn’t read the first book then it might seem a bit too much set-up and not enough focus on that aspect at all, but it will maybe not be as noticeable if you have read The Appeal because of the enjoyment in getting back into the lives of the characters.

The Christmas Appeal is a short but sweet read, for a reader who isn’t always fond of a festive-themed book it was good fun and leaned into its crazy antics, which were enjoyable to read about.