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Tara loves Christmas, she is basically Mrs. Claus. Come 1st December, her alarm tone changes and everything else is set to Christmas as well!
Except this year, things just aren’t going right and Christmas isn’t so much magical as a nightmare.
First, of course, there’s Gemma, her eldest and 13 years old, a typical teenager at the best of times, but now she has been caught vaping at school and is suspended for two weeks.
Then there are her younger ones, Nathan and Jax, whose lives seem to revolve around accidents and bowel movements that only parents of toddlers can really understand.
And something is off with Paul, her husband, who seems particularly distant lately. May it have to do with the fact that she is 8 months pregnant? It may, but then, he had never been distant with her other pregnancies.
But the cherry to top it all off is her arrogant and sexist boss, who sends her on “mammy leave” a week early because she has let the ball drop (according to him, because all she did was not answer a call outside her working hours).
So no, Christmas is not off to a good start. In fact, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
It gets even worse when her mother Pamela, now Pammy, announces she is coming back from Spain for a visit. She has never seen the boys, left Tara when she was young and lived her life elsewhere, not being much of a mother. And now she has decided to visit.
It’s one disaster after another, and a lot of talk of bodily functions, which yes, is probably an accurate representation of life with toddlers, but feels very pushed when actually written out (and then read by us, dear readers). So the start of the book is rather repetitive.
However as the stories and characters develop, the relationships become deeper and more meaningful. Of course, we know it will end well, it is Christmas after all, but how well no one could’ve imagined. It just goes to show even the people we think we know best have their past and their reasons for being the way they are and it may take many years to finally be able to talk about it.
But there’s no better time than Christmas to finally talk and listen to each other, right?
The Sh!te Before Christmas, by Serena Terry was published by HarperCollins on 10th November 2022. IBSN: 9780008579876
