Not my favourite Karen Swan book, unfortunately.

In The Christmas Postcards, we follow a young woman called Natasha who is devastated and stressed when she accidentally leaves her 3-year-old daughter's precious toy Moolah behind in an Air BnB in Vienna. Following a social media search, she soon finds out that Moolah was found by Duffy, a man currently trekking through Nepal on an emotional, soul-searching journey. The two exchange 'postcards' as a way to help Nats' daughter Mabel with her loss. We also flash back to Nats' hen do when she was having cold feet about her marriage and a met a man called Tom who changed everything for her.

This was fine for me. The writing was good as Karen Swan books always are, a nice Christmassy setting between snowy Nepalese mountains and a cosy Cotswold village, and an interesting past time/job belonging to main characters from animal artist Nats to literal mountain climber Duffy. I think of the main problems I had with this was I just didn't like Nats at all - I found her spoiled, whiny and honestly fairly idiotic for most of the book - and her overbearing parenting style just really irritated me as well but kids in books aren't always my favourite (though I find Karen Swan does them better than most).

It's fairly obvious from the start what the connection between Nats and Duffy is, other than Moolah, and while flashbacks reveal that story and everything that happened all those years ago we also learn about the not so great present the two of them are living in. Duffy clearly has severe emotional baggage due to a lot of family trauma and Nats' marriage is clearly not very good just by going with all the red flags being planted by her husband Rob (never there - literally, doesn't want her to go back to work and have an independent income of her own, expects sex constantly, not understanding Nats' grief over not being able to conceive a second child). I'm actually kind of surprised I was right when it came to Rob from quite early on, though after a while all the clues add up big time and it's really very dramatic, not quite realistic (especially how long this went on for - but also how did Nats have no suspicions about the lack of friends, family, colleagues etc).

I will say cheating is a big part of this book from many different angles, past and present, physical and emotional. I know this is is something that turns off a lot of people and most of the time, I'm find with it but it was just a lot in this book and it was kind of topped off with the cherry on the cake that was the Mabel reveal. Yes, what Rob did was utterly despicable but he was still Mabel's dad for 3 years and to suddenly know he wasn't, and to not be in her life anymore just felt very cruel to me. And I wondered what the long term effect something like this would have on a child..

So this was fine, nice to have another Karen Swan ticked off the list as I've made it a Christmas/December tradition (though might have to start doing it for her summer books too) but overall not my favourite one by far.