This was an interesting read.....a different take on a classic Christmas tale. I enjoyed it.....it did take me a bit to get into the book, but once the story got going, it was interesting to follow. I do relate with Merry--trying to make everything perfect for everyone and having one thing after the other go wrong. I did enjoy how the end came together! This is a great holiday feel-good read.

(I received a complimentary ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. Thank you Netgalley, Alcove Press and Susan Breen.

I was intrigued by the description and beautiful cover of the book Merry by Susan Breen, and was initially drawn in by the main character, her history, and her relationship troubles. But as the book continued, I found her to be unrelatable, her grown children to whiny and selfish, and her husband to be bland.
The book, in the end, did not resonate with me at all. It was definitely not the holiday celebration that I expected it to be.
However, I do appreciate the ARC of #Merry from #NetGalley.

Merry used to be a Christmas fanatic. Her favorite moments are from reading Dicken's, A Christmas Carol from the rare, 1st edition that has been in her family for generations. Now she wants to hand it down to one of her children but none of them want it. She decides to sell it and is now haunted by Charles Dicken's ghost. Merry surely has some problems and hopefully the family will stop fighting long enough to have a family Christmas.

This book started out slow... Really slow... Super slow. I nearly dropped it. But by the end I was crying so the storytelling definitely got there in the end. If one sticks with it, the pay off is worth it in the end

What a way to bring charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol into a story of today. I really enjoyed this book. It has a variety to feelings throughout and dives into some heavy topics. A nice ready for July. Thanks for the advanced copy to NetGalley and the publisher.

Please sign me up for every single book that plays off of Charles Dickens Christmas Carol! This is the best holiday book with family drama and Christmas magic. You will not regret picking it up!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Merry was a book the I was hoping would be a cozy Christmas family adventure to London and it turned out to be far too repetitive to enjoy. While the novel follows Merry and her highly dysfunctional family to London, nothing goes right with anything and Merry fights an internal battle with a nodule found by her doctor.
Without spoilers, we learn all about the wrongdoings of her family and I didn’t find any of it to be realistic, especially with a Dickens ghost randomly appearing. I almost gave up reading it five times but wanted to complete it to see if it had a decent ending and a talking dog just doesn’t make for a good ending. Could it be left open to a second book? Maybe, but it isn’t one I’ll be considering.
If you’re looking for a Christmas book, this is adjacent and takes time at the holidays, but leaves a lot to be desired and I hope a lot of editing takes place before the final release.

I do appreciate the opportunity to read and review this book and for the approval by NetGalley and Alcove Press.

Merry is an enjoyable Christmas story. I love that we visit Dickens and the ghosts he created in A Christmas Carol. It certainly added to the drama and gave the story some magical feels. Merry owns a cherished copy of The Christmas Carol signed by Charles Dickens. The book creates a family drama regarding which child will get the book.

Merry is a rare book collector with grown children. She loves Christmas but feels he family is fractured and she misses any closeness she had. She also has a husband, Sully. Adding to her angst to make the holiday something special is her medical condition. She is stressed about a diagnosis and feel even more compelled to make things right. She decides to do a family Christmas in London. The story gives us family drama, love, fear, need for communication and hope.

I recommend this book to those enjoy an imaginative story surrounding Christmas. The cover seems to fit the story this time! Thank you Netgalley for the chance to review.

haha what a book i didn't know i needed but am so glad it landed in my tbr pile. is it not Christmas in July about now too!?
a unique and delightful read. we are bought to the world of Merry and she is a woman on a mission to fix her family's cracks. she does so by taking them away to London so they can have the best Christmas ever. but on the inside she is also facing some deadlines. or possible ones which make this even more important. we are bought riht into Merry and her world and family. we feel emotional and get emotional with this story. there is so much to love, so much to get sad about but also so much to feel lighter about. this book gives us a varied and overall lovable story.
this is a book that makes you want to hug Merry and then hug your own family. you can watch and relate to what she and her loved ones are going through. you can see how miscommunications happen and how sometimes you try to fix things and nothing quite goes to 'that plan'.
i also love how you get this little story line of who the treasured book of Merry's should be passed down to and we go through the children and their "worth", we meet their problems and how upset they might be to get or not get to have the book but its so much more than that. there is so much joyfully more to this book that takes it to your own cherished heart.
you of course have the links and re-telling of sorts to the Christmas Carol which just add another layer of familiar heart to it. but its also its entirely own charm filled story.

Merry is a woman in her 50s who is anxiously awaiting cancer scan results and makes the impulsive decision to fly her family to London where she hopes to indulge her passion for Charles Dickens and find some Christmas magic.

I was drawn to the premise of this book. Based on the cozy cover, I expected a cozy read but found it instead to be an introspective story circling around many heavy themes: mortality, health problems, family tensions, unemployment, childhood trauma, financial concerns. Nonetheless, I was drawn into the story at first. Merry was relatable and I found the references to Dickens and the importance of The Christmas Carol as a family momento to be charming. As the book evolved, however, I struggled more and more to relate. Merry’s interest in Dickens grew into what felt more like an unhealthy obsession that was interfering with her day-to-day life.

I think this book will resonate differently with different people. Some may get drawn into the Christmas magic of Dickens while others may get caught up in the heavier themes of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. Well wasn't this the perfect book to put me in the holiday spirit! It's a modern day take on Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

Merry by Susan Breen
Thank you to Alcove Press and NetGalley for my gifted ARC.

This book caught me off guard—in the best way. I expected a cozy little Christmas tale to read with a hot drink and some twinkle lights. What I got was a full-blown festive meltdown with ghosts, guilt, grief, and one woman’s absolute refusal to let her family ruin Christmas. It’s messy, it’s magical, and it made me laugh and wince at the same time. Merry by Susan Breen is like A Christmas Carol wrapped in a dysfunctional family dramedy, sprinkled with ghost sightings and served with a side of “what the hell is happening.”

Merry Bingham is in her fifties, emotionally fraying at the edges, and still trying to orchestrate the perfect holiday. Christmas used to be her thing. Her calling. Her core identity. But lately, between her health scare, her kids becoming semi-strangers, and the looming fear of mortality, the sparkle has dimmed. The one thing still bringing her joy is her family’s heirloom: a first edition of A Christmas Carol signed by Charles freaking Dickens. This isn’t just any old book—it’s basically her emotional security blanket, her legacy, her holy grail.

So when she decides it’s time to pass it down and her three adult children react with something between indifference and low-key horror, she breaks. And then sells it. For cash. Which she uses to fund a surprise family Christmas trip to London. Because nothing says holiday healing like dragging your emotionally distant children and your emotionally shutdown husband halfway across the world to relive the life of Charles Dickens.

Let me pause here to say: what I wouldn’t kill for a signed edition of Dickens. That is not just a book—it’s a historical treasure. A national artifact. If I owned something like that, it would live in a vault, not under my arm on a plane next to someone snoring into a neck pillow. And yet Merry sells it. I mean, sure, it’s for a heartfelt cause, but still. She sold Dickens. I gasped.

What follows in London is a chaotic spiral of forced fun, family resentment, wildly awkward sightseeing, and the growing sense that Charles Dickens himself is haunting her—and not in a friendly, glowy, Muppet sort of way. More like, “You sold my book and dragged your family across the ocean and now I’m going to appear at random intervals and judge you.” Fair.

The book toes a strange line: half cozy holiday romp, half emotional excavation. It’s filled with festive touches (yes, Dickensian walking tours are included), but it’s also about what happens when people stop pretending everything’s fine. Merry’s children are a mess. Her marriage is cracked. Her body might be failing her. Her mind definitely is—unless you believe the ghost is real. Either way, she’s unraveling, and trying to tie everyone together with the glittering ribbon of Christmas nostalgia.

What I loved most was how sharply Breen nails the weird emotional terrain of family. The passive-aggressive conversations, the unspoken resentments, the “I’m fine”s that clearly mean “I’m dying inside.” And despite how outrageous the premise is, the emotional truth feels spot on. Anyone who has ever tried to force a “magical holiday experience” on people who are barely holding it together will recognize Merry’s desperate optimism. “Joy doesn’t always look like joy when you’re living it,” the ghost tells her. That one stopped me cold.

Is it too much? Sometimes. The plot goes off the rails more than once, and the mix of magical realism, family drama, and ghostly shenanigans can feel like a literary fruitcake—dense, oddly sweet, and maybe containing ingredients you weren’t expecting. But honestly? I didn’t mind. Because it works. Somehow. Against all odds.

Merry is not a Hallmark movie. It’s not tidy. It’s not even all that “cozy,” despite the London setting and Dickens references. What it is, though, is a heartfelt, messy, wonderfully offbeat meditation on love, legacy, disappointment, and the fantasy of a perfect Christmas. It dares to ask what happens when the traditions you built your life on suddenly don’t fit anymore. And it gives its flawed, relentless protagonist a fighting chance to rewrite her story.

Read this if you’ve ever tried to save your family with matching pajamas and a carefully curated holiday playlist. Read it if you’ve ever sat through a Christmas dinner wondering if anyone at the table even likes each other anymore. Read it if you believe ghosts might show up not to scare you, but to set you straight.

Four stars from me, and a begrudging nod of respect to Merry Bingham for having the sheer audacity to make Christmas happen—even if she had to sell literary gold to do it.

Thank you NetGalley and Alcove Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book started strong with a touching and relatable story about Merry, a woman in her 50s dealing with health fears and family struggles. Those parts felt real and heartfelt. Once the ghost of Charles Dickens showed up, things got a bit too silly and confusing for me. The characters became flat, and the story lost its emotional pull. It felt like a mix of fantasy, cozy fiction, and chaos.

Still, the idea is a fun one, and if you enjoy light, festive reads with a bit of heart and whimsy, you might like this more than I did.

Merry Bingham is feeling the injustice of life; upon receiving troubling health news, she sells her one heirloom of true value, a first edition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, to pay for a lavish family Christmas trip to London for her three children and her husband. What is intended as an effort to bring together Merry's disjointed family ends up being a comedy of errors, includig the ghost of a disgruntled acahrles Dickens. Will Merry be able to save what is left of Christmas?

I liked the concept of this story, and it is a fun, lighthearted read, balanced out by some much heavier topics, but at the end of the day, I was not the audience for this book. If you like reading more lighthearted stories, you will definitely appreciate this though. All in all, I do think it's a nice book to get into a Christmassy mood!

Thank you very much to Alcove Press for the advacnce review copy!

Loved this! Excited to talk about it with my viewers when we get closer to the holiday season. This has all the festive feels with some heartwarming depth that makes this perfect to read around the holidays.

This sweet Christmas story is a must read. I loved the plot and characters and a perfect read for the holidays! Highly recommend!

I love Christmas and all things Christmas-related, so this was the perfect read for me! 🎄 🎁

Merry Bingham loves Christmas. Her most favourite thing in the world is her family's heirloom copy of A Christmas Carol personally signed by Charles Dickens and passed down to her through the generations. When she learns she must undergo some medical tests to determine if she has cancer, Merry decides to hand the much treasured book to her children. Much to her shock they aren't interested in the book so Merry sells it and takes her husband and 3 adult children to London for Christmas. She's determined to bring the joy of Christmas to them despite her children bickering, her husband not speaking to her, the apartment they've rented not being up to scratch and the ghost t of Charles Dickens appearing to her.

While this book may appear to be a cosy story about a family Christmas gone wrong in every possible way, it is so much more. There's a surprising depth to this story which explores the relationships between the adult children and the impact on the family dynamics when a parent is confronted with their mortality. The book is tinged with sadness but leaves you with a sense of hope that even in mixed-up families like this one, miss-communication can be worked through when people care for each other.

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I enjoyed reading a Christmas book in July. A cute take on a christmas carol. An easy christmas read. Thanks to Netgalley and Alcove Press for ARC.

A once-bright Yuletide spirit now dimmed, Merry Bingham grapples with the encroaching shadows of worry—family, fortune, and the inevitable chill of mortality. Her solace, a balm against the mounting anxieties, lies solely within the aged pages of an heirloom *A Christmas Carol*, its very ink touched by Dickens' own hand, a legacy tracing back five generations. As the specter of medical results looms, threatening to extinguish her final festive season, Merry faces the poignant task of relinquishing this cherished tome—only to find her three children unwilting to embrace its storied past. This narrative, a profound melancholic echo, resonated deeply within me.
Thanks to NeTGalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book which publishes 9/23/2025

very Hallmark Holiday Movie meets something like Little Fires Everywhere and I love it for that. the writing is amazing, too. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.