Search - A Christmas Promise (Christmas, Bk 7)

All of Anne Perry's Christmas stories are wonderful! They are heart-warming stories of hope, love and friendship. This is a delightful book of two young children, one 13 and the other 8 years old, Minnie Maude Mudway, who is bound and determined to find her friend, Charlie...a donkey. It is a great book, hard to put down but filled with hope and friendship. You will love it!

A Christmas Promise by New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry,is an engaging mystery set in Victorian England involving two children searching for a lost donkey. The donkey belonged to the younger girl's Uncle, who died recently under suspicious circumstances. The girls quickly become entangled in a situation which becomes increasingly more dangerous. I enjoyed the book and felt that it would be equally appropriate for an adult who likes books written for and about children, and for young readers ages 9 and up. I give it 3 stars.

I didn't realize till well into the story that this is set before Gracie Phipps came to work for Thomas & Charlotte Pitt as their maid. Thirteen-year-old Gracie meets an 8-year-old girl in the market looking for a lost donkey. Her Uncle Alf has died and his cart and the donkey are missing. Reluctantly Gracie helps her as she realizes that the stubborn child will continue to search on her own and is too young to get very far. But it becomes apparent that Uncle Alf was killed and the cart taken for unknown reasons - and if the girls continue to ask questions, they may very well be in danger too. It's a much better story than the previous one in the series, and though these Christmas tales lack substance, the rich atmosphere of Perry's Victorian writing is always an interesting world to return to.