It is Christmas 1985, and the middle-class Coco is coming back from university. Christmas is a stressful time anyway, and with a working class boyfriend, a match-making mother, a stray pet turkey and the first introduction of two very different families, this one is going to be a doozy.

After all the angsty, grim, Christmas novels now coming out, it is nice to find something that views the season’s family perils with a shrug and a chuckle. The main heroine is hardly flawless and occasionally annoying but then she’s a nineteen-year-old, very sheltered, teenager so this rings very true. It is competently written, and amusing although I never found it laugh-out-loud funny. Written in 2013, the author has done his research into the 80’s – mentions of Bananarama and The Two Ronnies set the date nicely as do the reference to Merry Christmas Everyone, that year’s Christmas no 1.

Robert Bryndza uses traditional British Grammar with single quotes for speech, which is unusual in an ebook and very nice to see. There are a few grammar errors, full-stops before quotes, but I am really nitpicking to mention these. However, the internal formatting does let this down. Paragraphs and speech are not inset, creating the appearance of a “wall of text” which made the story a little difficult to get into. It also contains a bonus chapter for one of the author’s other books at the end, covering Christmas 2008 and another domestic disaster.

Overall, this book is a light, fluffy, romance with a touch of Christmas chaos, which will appeal to people looking for a light, amusing, read.