Mr Dickens and His Carol book review

Mr Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva
Published by Allison & Busby on December 1, 2017
Pages: 285
Goodreads

Charles Dickens should be looking forward to Christmas. But when his latest book, Martin Chuzzlewit, is a flop, his publishers give him an ultimatum. Either he writes a Christmas book in a month or they will call in his debts and he could lose everything. Dickens has no choice but to grudgingly accept.
Yet inspiration is slow to strike, and in his desperate search for ideas, Dickens becomes increasingly distant from his own family as his fascination with a mysterious woman and her young son develops. But all is not as it seems . . .
In true Dickens style, this is a tale of ghosts and secrets, set in the heart of Victorian London.

I have joined my library’s book club and this was the pick for our December meeting. I really enjoyed this book as a festive read, there was definitely an atmosphere built up in this book and the scenes that are written throughout. I think it offered a really good look at what Dicken’s life might have looked like when he was writing A Christmas Carol, although she is quite honest about the fact she rejigged the facts to sit better within her story. I will say although I enjoyed the different viewpoint I really didn’t enjoy Charles as a character and found him a little jarring. But then again the atmospheric writing more than made up for that.

I have to say that the characters were my least favourite part of Mr Dickens and His Carol. I don’t think there was a single one that I felt I connected with or wanted to know more about. I was actually quite disappointed by them on a whole, I just wish they had been a little less two dimensional and had had more to offer as a whole. The big problem I had with this book was Charles himself, he just wasn’t a likeable character and although the point of the book is to watch him develop and grow I just didn’t feel as though the end result was as satisfying or as believable as it should have been.

The best bit and the thing that saved Mr Dickens and His Carol from being a complete flop was the writing style and the fact that it felt as though it might have been written by the modern age, Dickens. I loved the way that the city was described and his walks through the various different places in the city. I loved learning about his writing technique, as a writer myself it was really interesting to see how he managed to combat the writer’s block that takes over throughout the story!

The worst bits for me apart from the characters would have to be the relationships within this story. They made me angry especially the way that Charles dealt with the people surrounding him. The dilemmas that he faced throughout the story and the plot made me angry if I’m honest, I think if the atmospheric writing hadn’t been so well done then Mr Dickens and His Carol would have had a lot lower of rating. I find it very hard to enjoy a book where the relationships and the characters aren’t easy to connect with.

I would recommend Mr Dickens and His Carol purely because of the writing style and how festive it made me feel. I don’t think I will be reading this one ever again, but for the first book for my book club it was a nice read!

What are some of your favourite festive reads? Let me know what you like to read at Christmas!