Take Five: Heather Webb and Hazel Gaynor’s CHRISTMAS WITH THE QUEEN

We’re delighted to bring you a sneak peek at the upcoming release from longtime WU contributor Heather Webb and her collaborator Hazel Gaynor. The book, CHRISTMAS WITH THE QUEEN, releases this coming Tuesday, November 19th. A bit about their collaboration:

Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb’s co-written historical novels have all been published to critical acclaim. The USA Today and international bestseller, Last Christmas in Paris, won the 2018 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award, Meet Me in Monaco was shortlisted for the 2020 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Novel award, and Three Words for Goodbye was selected by Prima Magazine as a Best Novel of 2021. Christmas With The Queen is their fourth collaboration.

The book is getting plenty of pre-release buzz, including this:

“A page-turning festive read, full of will they/won’t they romance, intriguing glimpses of royal life behind palace doors, and inspiring culinary treats. As delicious as a Christmas pudding topped with flaming brandy and lashings of cream.”- Gill Paul, USA Today bestselling author

In the spirit to hear more? Here are Heather and Hazel!

Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?

HW&HG: Pitched as The Crown meets When Harry Met Sally, Christmas with the Queen is a heartwarming historical novel, set during the early reign of Queen Elizabeth. A royal chef and a royal correspondent to the BBC who share a past, meet again unexpectedly in the halls of Sandringham and Buckingham Palace. Despite personal and professional heartache, Jack and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmas seasons and they find themselves growing ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret… You also see the queen and Prince Philip moving through the background of the story. It’s very Christmasy, very cozy, and more than a little nostalgic in the best way.

Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

HW&HG: What early readers have most loved about the book are the combined elements of the 1950s setting, the scenes written from the point of view of Queen Elizabeth, the ‘behind-the-scenes- look at life at Sandringham at Christmas, and the will they/won’t they romance between Olive and Jack. The story takes us from London’s Piccadilly to as far away as New Zealand and Antarctica! Lots of readers have also picked up on the culinary elements – how could we not lavish the story with lots of mouth-watering dishes when Jack, a chef from New Orleans, has joined the staff.

Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

HW&HG: As with all the best love stories, Jack and Olive’s relationship is complicated and messy. They experience a whole range of emotions during the five years when the main story of the book is set as well as a limited secondary timeline where you see our two main characters meet, the day the end of WWII is announced in the UK (Victory in Europe Day).

For Olive, an ambitious young woman at the BBC, she faces challenges of being taken seriously as a reporter and to be given the same opportunities as her male counterparts. Also a single mother, she faces the daily scrutiny of being an unmarried mother, a status which was very much frowned upon by society at the time. For Jack, his main hurdle is grief – the loss of his wife, but also of his grandpa from years before – and how it affects his ambitions as an unconventional chef. For them both, perhaps the greatest challenge they face is forgiveness as they come to terms with the past in order to look ahead to the future.

Our secondary characters, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, also face their new duties, the rumors that surround them, and the tour in which Philip learns what matters most to him.

Q4: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any? 

HW&HG: Of course, it is always a challenge to co-author a book, especially when the two authors live on opposite sides of the Atlantic, but it is a challenge we relish. This was such a fun book to write together as we explored the secretive world behind the Palace doors and learned about royal Christmas traditions, not least the food! A will they/won’t they romance is also great fun to create on the page and we had some ‘interesting’ conversations and brainstorming sessions about how Jack and Olive’s love story would play out. Capturing the queen in the first person point of view scenes should have been more challenging than it was. We had great fun writing those pieces and showing a softer side to the woman behind the crown. In many ways, it was a privilege to write this book during the queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, which were too quickly followed by her death. To watch the outpouring of affection for her, particularly the queue to see her lying in state, was especially powerful, and definitely impacted us as we returned to the page.

Q5: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?

HW&HG: This is our fourth co-written book and, as with all the others, we have learned a lot from our research and have had a great time navigating the ups and downs of our characters’ lives. The best reward is yet to come when we take the book on tour together and finally get to engage with readers and booksellers. That is, after all, what it is all about. (And a couple of celebratory Christmas cocktails along the way!)

Congratulations on the new book, ladies! Thank you for sharing this enticing look behind-the-scenes.

WU Community, you can learn more about our friend Heather on her website, or by following her on Facebook and IG. Learn more about Hazel and Heather’s new book by following the buy-links below. Read on!