Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher

Synopsis :

Elfrida Phipps, once on the London stage and retired at 62, never anticipates going off with a man. But after a devastating tragedy, church organist Oscar Blundell asks for her companionship. 

So with her brown and white dog in tow, Elfrida begins her journey, not knowing that joining her and Oscar at a rundown Victorian house in Scotland will be a young woman nursing a broken heart, a teenager escaping an unhappy home, and a stranger arriving during a snowstorm  Now these five very different people form an unexpected circle of friends that will forever change their lives.


I am sure you have heard of the saying 'do not judge a book by it's cover'.  Well, that's exactly what I did when I saw Winter Solstice.  With it's flower theme cover, I kinda judged it as a romance book. However, having read the synopsis on the back over, it doesn't seems to be the case.  So, with much apprehension, I decided to give it a try.

Winter Solstice is a story of five people who have to spent the Christmas together due to many circumstances at a place where they would normally not spent their holiday given their stature and way of lives and geographical location.  Yet, in a old but huge house in a small village in Scotland and for a few days, you can say they became a family.

First we have Elfrida who is 62 and Oscar who is 67 years of age respectively.  You can say they are like the grandparents in the story.  Then there's Carrie who at 30 years old is nursing a broken heart and just left her job in Austria and returned to London to discover that her niece of 14 years old has no one to care for her over the Christmas holidays.  Last but not least, we have Sam who is around 36 or 38 years old and who was given the option to purchase the Victorian house by one of the owners and who is nursing his own wounds.

Winter Solstice is the story of the five of them. How they came together and be with each other and through the support of one another, hurts were healed and tragedy overcame.

I can imagine how this would be a wonderful read during Christmas and I can imagine how this can be made into a family oriented holiday movies and with the beauty of winter wonderland of rural Scotland.

So, if you like the above elements, then you will like Winter Solstice.