I don't know what your December is like, but, despite all of our best intentions, December always ends up crazier than I expect. I always try to get a jump start on my baking and shopping but neither of those are completely done yet. I did rearrange a few things in my schedule but then I also got a new computer a couple weeks ago that we are still getting 100% right (up and downsides to having a husband who likes to tinker with computers). We just upgraded both of our cell phones which takes a little time to get right. AND we have adoption paperwork and a profile book we really need to get done. And I have an almost 2 year old (WHAT??) who is constantly trying to rearrange the tree and just get into everything. I need easy comfort reads in December, especially this December.
I have enjoyed almost everything Elin Hilderbrand has written but this series, the Winter Street series, is among my absolute favorite. (Also on the short list is this book and this one.) The first book, titled Winter Street came out in 2014 and I read it immediately. Then have reread it every year since. The following books came out in 2015, 2016, and 2017 and were added to my annual reread as soon as they came out. This year will be my 6th reread of Winter Street and I am SO looking forward to it.
Winter Street follows members of the Quinn family who own an inn on Nantucket, on, appropriately, Winter Street. (In case you were wondering, and I finally was enough after 6 years, there really is a Winter Street on Nantucket. It looks to be about a block long with ~6 houses. Sadly, no Google street view for it.) Their patriarch Kelley, runs the inn with his second wife Mitzi (who is a little ditzy). Kelley has three kids from his first marriage, Patrick, Kevin, and Ava; and one from his second, Bart. His first wife is a Katie Couric type, Margaret Quinn, who does the CBS evening news and lives in New York City. Patrick lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and their three boys. Kevin and Ava both live on Nantucket and have jobs outside of helping at the Inn.
All these family members are going through their own dramas and issues. In typical Elin Hilderbrand fashion, the books all bounce back and forth between their different points of views. On the first read it was a lot of characters to keep track of. By the 5th rereading of a 4 book series, well I wrote that whole summary without looking up a single name. I feel like I know these people.
Patrick does some sort of stocks/bonds/financing (to be clear, I don't understand this job in real life) and is under a lot of pressure at work to put up big numbers. I have adopted his wife's Christmas tree decorating philosophy as my own (although with a fraction of the budget). His wife, Jennifer becomes a more central character in the later books when Patrick is other wise, indisposed.
Kevin is a bartender on Nantucket and having a secret relationship with the Inn's French housekeeper, Isabelle. Dating someone who works at a bar and lives with his parents in his late 20s isn't the most enticing option and he wants to make something more of himself, especially compared to his older brother.
Ava is a elementary school music teacher on Nantucket with two possible suitors in the first book and then a 3rd is added later on. Being the main younger woman character, I've always felt a special kinship with her, even though our lives are pretty opposite.
And Bart is a Marine who has just been deployed right before the series starts. The family spend the whole first book waiting to get word that he is safe in Afghanistan. Being the youngest, and the only one from the second marriage, he has gotten a much easier deal than the "olders", at least until he joined the Marines and was sent to Afghanistan.
There is just something so cozy about reading about the Quinns again every Christmas season. The books are on the shorter side, I don't think any are over 300 pages, which makes it easy to cruise right through them when I have dozens of other things on my to-do list. I love reading about Nantucket, about a close family, about how they all stick together when things don't go the way they plan.
This was originally planned as a trilogy and I do find the 4th to be the weakest of the set but I also wasn't complaining about spending one more Christmas with the Quinns. She also self-references one of her own books (that I also enjoyed) within either the 3rd or 4th that I still find off-putting, even when I know it is coming. These characters aren't always making the best decisions and can find themselves in various troubles - legal and otherwise - but they always come back together in the end. I get the feeling that there is a lot of love within this family and I really enjoy the time I spend with the Quinns every December. I don't see an end to my annual rereading anytime soon.
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