If you are looking for a feel-good book to read to get you in the Christmas spirit, and you want something a little more cheerful than “A Christmas Carol”, this is the book for you!
It was by chance that I happened upon one of Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country books. Being Irish, if it has anything to do with it, I am reading it! I was glad to find these books, they are a fun read, while interesting, and the descriptions have you feeling like you are sitting in the same room as the characters.
The series revolves around an Irish town Doctor of long-standing, and his newly hired Doctor, who is learning his senior partners’ ways, usually with laughs. They share a house with a housekeeper who keeps you chuckling as well, and the practice is actually ran out of said house. (Don’t you wish it was still like that?)
They are in the county of Ballybucklebo, and Barry is excited to spend his first Christmas in the village, if his fiancé cooperates, that is. A new Doctor in town is proving to be stiff competition as well, practicing medicine in a “new” way that the other two gentlemen don’t favor. This “new” type of medicine is the basic way we are treated by doctors. Not new to us, but new to the setting this story takes place in.
As Fingal tries to figure out his love-life, and Barry tries to salvage his, they also take it upon themselves to help a young single mother who is struggling with her sick son. The story is not overly romantic (I certainly wouldn’t put a Harlequin stamp on it) but definitely gives you an idea of what these two somewhat attached men struggle through with the respective women in their lives.
There is enough drama and emotional attachment to this little sick boy, his mother, and the doctor’s themselves that will keep you turning the pages on this book until you realize you are at the end and looking for another of Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country stories. This is a great read, a feel good story, that will have you laughing as well as rooting for the characters in the story.
For your own information, some other Irish Country books by Patrick Taylor are, “An Irish Country Doctor, An Irish Country Girl (about their wonderful housekeeper in her younger days), and An Irish Country Wedding.”
Have you been lucky enough to read one of these books? Did you enjoy them as much as I have?
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