Karen Swan
YOU know that the festive season is well and truly on its
way when a Karen Swan Christmas cracker wends its way enticingly to the top of
the charts and the front of the bookshelves.
And this year, the queen of epic romances sweeps us away to
the alluring sights of Copenhagen – the city of glittering snow and twinkling
lights – where an art history student is out of love and longing for a special
someone to put magic into her Christmas gloom.
Author of big festive hitters like Midnight in the Snow, The Christmas Party, Christmas Under the Stars and Christmas By Candlelight, Swan (pictured below) is an expert at delivering sack-loads of love, mystery, atmospherics and drama… and this enchanting story featuring three first dates and an art world discovery sparkles like a frost-filled morning. Christmas in Copenhagen is a magical time of year but Darcy Cotterell isn’t feeling festive. Newly single – again – after her boyfriend Lars cheated on her, she’s not even going home for Christmas. Instead the 26-year-old will be spending her holiday finishing her art history thesis.
But her best friend Freja – in the throes of her own torrid love affair – has other ideas and signs up Darcy to a dating app, determined that she won’t be lonely this Christmas. Darcy agrees to three blind dates... but her mind is firmly on work and not play.An unknown portrait by Denmark’s greatest painter is
discovered beneath another masterpiece and Darcy is charged with discovering
the identity of the woman in the painting. With no name or any supporting
evidence to work with, she must utilise all her research skills to find a
ghost.
Working closely with the most powerful figures in the art scene, she encounters sexy, arrogant corporate lawyer Max Lorensen who just happens to be Copenhagen’s bachelor number one and whose charm lures her into his dizzying orbit and makes her feel ‘beautiful, seductive; powerful, even.’ The mutual attraction would seem to be instant but, knowing they must work together, they abandon the match... or try to. But their feelings are undeniable... until Darcy discovers that Max has an agenda.
From first page to last, this is a captivating and
multi-layered wintertime odyssey which moves between a simmering, shimmering
romance in the present and a heartbreaking mystery from the past... and along
the way, treats readers to a dazzling array of superbly portrayed characters. Sprinkled throughout with Swan’s trademark twists and turns,
human insight, cosy charm, and eye for comedy, this is the ideal warm-up for
the Christmas holiday season.
(Pan, paperback, £9.99)
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